tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427Sat, 28 Mar 2015 23:07:56 +0000PFACastroguest contributorsRoxieSilent Film FestivalYear-end wrap-updocumentarylistsYBCALinksSilentsStanfordNoir CitySFIFFFrisco filmmakersalvagefilm vs. videoanimationNiles Essanay Film MuseumSFMOMARafaelJapanese filmParamountSF CinemathequebooksSFIFF56BalboaRed Vicmidnight moviesLandmarkOddballIOHTE 2011New PeopleOscarsSFFS Fall SeasonArtists' Television AccessIOHTE 2012MVFFhorroriohte 2010Rainer Werner FassbinderSFIAAFFIOHTE 2014blog-a-thonIndiefestKorean filmAlfred HitchcockChinese cinemaFramelineIOHTE 2009SFIFF54Apichatpong Weerasethakulcollageinterviewingseasonal moviegoingIOHTE 2008IOHTE 2013Opera Plaza CinemaThai filmnarrative shorts4-StarFilm preservationSFFS ScreenSFIFF57VIZ CinemaBruce ConnerCAAM FestHoleHeadhistory of my cinephiliaCanyon CinemaNew ParkwayVertigoBANG BANGHong Sang-sooChris MarkerCinequestJean-Luc GodardOther CinemaSFJFFVictoriaClaire DenisFilm on Film FoundationPeaches ChristWesternsfilmmusicBuster KeatonCecil B. DeMilleExploratoriumFrench Cinema NowFritz LangGolden Gate AwardsHome VideoJacques TatiKevin BrownlowPier Paolo PasoliniPre-CodePreston SturgesVoguetravelAkira KurosawaHell On Frisco Baywatching all kinds of films in San Francisco theatreshttp://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)Blogger792125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-3868017778245847041Thu, 26 Mar 2015 23:56:00 +00002015-03-27T00:18:29.936-07:00booksCastrodocumentaryFrisco filmmakerOddballVogueChristo's Valley Curtain (1973)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uZzsZzaLw54/VRUEJ7M9bGI/AAAAAAAAH-I/BxjcVWeJheY/s1600/christosvalleycurtain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-uZzsZzaLw54/VRUEJ7M9bGI/AAAAAAAAH-I/BxjcVWeJheY/s1600/christosvalleycurtain.jpg" height="302" width="400" /></a></div>WHO: Albert Maysles, David Maysles and Ellen Giffard co-directed this.<br /><br />WHAT: The first of six films the Maysles Brothers made documenting the creation of ambitious, if temporary, "environmental art" installations by Bulgarian-born visionary Christo and his artistic and matrimonial partner Jeanne-Claude, <i><b>Christo's Valley Curtain</b></i> is also at 28 minutes the shortest of these six films, and the only Maysles film to be nominated for an Academy Award. It documents the erection of a giant strip of orange fabric in a windswept valley in Colorado. Joe McElhaney writes in his top-notch book, <a href="https://www.cineaste.com/articles/emalbert-mayslesem"><i>Albert Maysles</i></a>:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">The film places great importance on the two remaining hours the workers have in which to get the curtain up before the winds change direction, thereby threatening not only the completion of the curtain but the lives of the workers. But time here is simply a question of deadlines to be faced -- a classical overcoming of obstacles, successfully achieved in all of these Christo and Jeanne-Claude films, which, with one exception, end on a note of triumph. These films return to a variation on the crisis structure of the Robert Drew films from which David and Albert Maysles had originally wanted to break away.</blockquote>WHERE/WHEN: Screens tonight as part of Oddball Films's 8PM <a href="http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/2015/03/monumental-artscapes-christo-smithson.html">Monumental Artscapes</a> program, and will also screen during the week of May 8-14 (precise time/day to be announced) at the <a href="http://www.cinemasf.com/vogue/">Vogue</a>.<br /><br />WHY: With the passing away of great filmmaker Albert Maysles earlier this month at the age of 88, an era of documentary production in America seems to have come to an end. The influential figure who, with his late brother David (as well as other collaborators) filmed such landmark non-fiction works as <i><b>Salesman</b></i> and <i><b>Grey Gardens</b></i> is deserving of as many cinematic tributes as can be thought up, especially in the Frisco Bay area, at the outskirts of which at least two of his greatest achievements were filmed (<i><b>Gimme Shelter</b></i>, portraying a Rolling Stones concert at the Altamont Speedway on the Eastern edge of Alameda county between Livermore and Tracy, and <i><b>Running Fence</b></i>, the second Christo/Jeanne-Claude film, set at the border of Marin and Sonoma counties.)<br /><br />Tonight's Oddball Films show juxtaposes <i><b>Christo's Valley Curtain</b></i> with Robert Smithson's 1970 film of his own <i><b>Spiral Jetty </b></i>in Utah's Great Salt Lake, as well as films and footage focusing on artists David Alfaro Siqueiros, Claes Oldenburg and G. Augustine Lynas, providing an opportunity to contrast the Maysles documentary approach against other filmmakers'. A more jarring juxtaposition may be achieved by the opening double-bill in the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/p-list.html#apr01">Castro Theatre</a>'s just-announced <a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/coming-soon.html">April</a> calendar, which pairs the Maysles' (and Ellen Hovde's and Muffie Meyer's) <i><b>Grey Gardens</b></i> with a 35mm print of the notorious John Waters gross-out <i><b>Pink Flamingos</b></i>. No fooling!<br /><br />Further down on the horizon, details are just starting to come out about a week-long Maysles tribute at Frisco's forgotten single-screen cinema the <a href="http://www.cinemasf.com/vogue/">Vogue</a>, on May 8th-14th. Sixteen films co-directed by Albert Maysles will be collected together, presented by luminary special guests including (but perhaps not limited to) Jon Else, Joan Churchill, Stephen Lighthill, and (by Skype) D. A. Pennebaker and Susan Froemke. All of the aforementioned Maysles films will screen at least once during the festival, as well as<b><i> Meet Marlon Brando</i></b> on May 8th, <b><i>Get Yer Ya-Yas Out!</i></b> on May 9th &amp; 14th, and more Christo/Jeanne-Claude films <i><b>The Gates</b></i> May 10th and both <i><b>Islands </b></i>and <i><b>Umbrellas</b></i> on May 12th. More information is forthcoming. The festival is the brainchild of Brisbane documentarian <a href="http://cinesourcemagazine.com/index.php?/site/comments/albert_maysles_the_end_of_the_60s_other_great_documentaries/#.VRSbW1dp9n8">David L. Brown</a>, who I suspect was involved in the film screening at this "Sneak Preview" tribute to another non-fiction legend, Les Blank at the <a href="http://sebastopolfilmfestival.org/films/sneak-preview-film/">Sebastapol Documentary Film Festival</a> tomorrow night.<br /><br />HOW: Tonight's Oddball screening will be all 16mm; I'm told <i><b>Christo's Valley Curtain</b></i> is a particularly lovely print. The May festival's formats are as yet unspecified, although I would bet on digital knowing how infrequently the Vogue has screened celluloid in the last couple of years.http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/03/christos-valley-curtain-1973.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-1517318950976226865Wed, 04 Feb 2015 23:17:00 +00002015-02-04T15:18:27.543-08:004-StarAlamoBluelightfilm vs. videoguest contributor introductionsIOHTE 2014listsMVFFNiles Essanay Film MuseumOpera Plaza CinemaPFAYear-end wrap-upI Only Have Two Eyes: 2014 Edition<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xHCYQfo40ec/VMWAHmZ1Q6I/AAAAAAAAHwk/-6bbD6osoRU/s1600/macao.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xHCYQfo40ec/VMWAHmZ1Q6I/AAAAAAAAHwk/-6bbD6osoRU/s1600/macao.bmp" height="301" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Warner DVD of Macao</td></tr></tbody></table>We're already well into the 2015 film-going year, but it's not too late to take time to reflect on the cinematic character of 2014 before it recedes into memory too far. One <a href="http://eatdrinkfilms.com/2014/11/20/interstellar-in-five-dimensions-a-trip-through-the-many-formats-of-christopher-nolans-epic/">major release</a> bucked trends by bringing 35mm and 70mm projectors back to life in a few cinema spaces. Otherwise, 35mm screenings of new films all but disappeared from the Frisco Bay screening landscape, with only the <a href="http://www.lntsf.com/4-star-theatre.html">4-Star</a> in San Francisco and the <a href="http://www.bluelightcinemas.com/">Bluelight Cinemas</a> in Cupertino by year's-end still regularly playing whatever new commercially-available films they're able to track down prints for from the studios still striking them. Remaining film projectors at a place like the <a href="http://www.landmarktheatres.com/san-francisco/opera-plaza-cinema">Opera Plaza</a> were so under-utilized in the past twelve months that learning that the venue just the other day removed them from all but one of its tiny screening rooms (installing DCP-capable equipment into its two comparatively "larger" houses) felt completely unsurprising and barely disappointing at all to me. It's safe to say that film festivals are no longer a home for 35mm either; as far as I'm aware the only new films that screened in that format at any local fests in 2014 were the throwback short <i style="font-weight: bold;">Broncho Billy and the Bandit's Secret</i>&nbsp;at the <a href="http://www.nilesfilmmuseum.org/BBSFF-2014.htm">Broncho Billy Silent Film Festival</a> in June, and Yoji Yamada's <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Little House</i>&nbsp;at <a href="http://tickets.cafilm.org/websales/pages/info.aspx?evtinfo=89146~07e85ca3-74b6-4863-ac45-3c9d86723cd5">Mill Valley</a> in October.<br /><br />Most of the major local festivals have only kept the embers of sprocketed film warm in 2014 either by showing 16mm works by "experimental" artists still employing celluloid, or by showing a few revival titles in 35mm. Indeed, revivals and repertory houses are now where almost all of the action is at for those who like to view light passing through 35mm strips onto screens. Frisco Bay still has venues where this is a major component of programming, as well as a growing contingent of cinema spaces finding creative ways to attract audiences out of their home-viewing patterns (which are <a href="http://hoodline.com/2014/11/san-franciscos-video-rental-stores-adapting-to-survive-in-changing-times">shifting themselves</a>) by embracing digital-age developments. I'm eager to see what 2015 will bring to the cinephiliac landscape in San Francisco and its surroundings. Changes are afoot; the <a href="http://www.dailycal.org/2014/04/01/berkeley-art-museum-announces-temporary-hiatus-preparation-relocation/">Pacific Film Archive</a> in Berkeley will be closing midyear to prepare for a move to a new, more transit-connected space; meanwhile the biggest DCP <a href="http://blook.bampfa.berkeley.edu/2013/06/dcp-demanding-conversion-perfected.html">advocate</a> among its programming team has just <a href="http://ww2.kqed.org/arts/2015/01/16/pacific-film-archives-steve-seid-on-retiring-amidst-changing-face-of-film/">retired</a>. The <a href="http://drafthouse.com/san_francisco/new_mission">Alamo Drafthouse</a> is expected to open its first branch in the region in 2015 as well, at a site within walking distance of several cherished repertory haunts. As highlighted in the new <a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/links/">Film-Friendly Links</a> section of the Film On Film Foundation website, Alamo CEO <a href="http://deadline.com/2014/10/alamo-drafthouse-tim-league-christopher-nolan-quentin-tarantino-digital-film-projection-854765/">Tim League</a> appears committed to involving 35mm in his company's continued expansion. I'm excited to see how that shakes out.<br /><br />My annual "I Only Have Two Eyes" survey of local cinephiles' favorite screenings of revival and repertory films may have more mentions of digital screenings than ever for 2014, but as you'll see as I unveil the various contributions over the next week or so, there is plenty of diversity of format, venue, and of course the films themselves, in their selections. I'm so pleased to have gotten a strong turnout for this year's poll, including many participants from the <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2013.html">past</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2012.html">seven</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2012/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2011.html">years</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/search/label/iohte%202010">when</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2009.html">I've</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2009/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2008.html">conducted</a> <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2008/01/2007-i-only-have-two-eyes.html">it</a>, as well as new "faces". Enjoy perusing their lists and comments&nbsp;as more&nbsp;are&nbsp;added!<br /><br />January 26: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-veronika-ferdman.html">Veronika Ferdman</a>, who writes for <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/author/168">Slant Magazine</a>, <a href="http://www.inreviewonline.com/results/r.html?cx=partner-pub-9052826112447826%3Aqrsn0y-pi1r&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=ISO-8859-1&amp;q=veronkia+ferdman&amp;sa=Search">In Review Online</a> and elsewhere.<br />January 26: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-lucy-laird.html">Lucy Laird</a>, Operations Director for the <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/about/staff">SF Silent Film Festival</a>.<br />January 27:&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-michael-hawley.html">Michael Hawley</a>, who blogs at his own site&nbsp;<a href="http://film-415.blogspot.com/">film-415</a>. <br />January 27:&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/jesse-hawthorne-ficks.html">Jesse Hawthorne Ficks</a>, educator at&nbsp;<a href="http://www2.academyart.edu/degrees/graduate-liberal-arts-faculty.html">the Academy of Art</a>&nbsp;&amp; <a href="http://www.midnitesformaniacs.com/">MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS</a><br />January 28: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-margarita-landazuri.html">Margarita Landazuri</a>, who writes for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.tcm.com/search/?text=landazuri&amp;type=allSite">Turner Classic Movies</a>&nbsp;&amp; elsewhere.<br />January 28:&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-ben-armington.html">Ben Armington</a>,&nbsp;Box Cubed Box Office guy for many Bay Area Film Festivals.<br />January 29:&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-terri-saul.html">Terri Saul</a>, a&nbsp;<a href="http://www.terrisaul.com/about.html">visual artist</a>&nbsp;who posts capsule reviews on&nbsp;<a href="http://letterboxd.com/sisterrye/films/reviews/">Letterboxd</a>.<br />January 29: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-lincoln-specter.html">Lincoln Spector</a>, the proprietor of <a href="http://bayflicks.net/">Bayflicks</a>.<br />January 30: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-michael-guillen.html">Michael Guillén</a>, schoolmaster of <a href="http://theeveningclass.blogspot.com/">The Evening Class</a> and contributor to other publications.<br />January 30: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-david-robson.html">David Robson</a>, editorial director of <a href="http://www.jaman.com/">Jaman</a> and caretaker of <a href="http://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/">The House of Sparrows</a>.<br />January 31: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-jonathan-kiefer.html">Jonathan Kiefer</a>, critic for&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/ArticleArchives?author=2126614">SF Weekly</a>&nbsp;and the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/authors/jonathan-kiefer/">Village Voice</a>.<br />January 31: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-adrianne-finelli.html">Adrianne Finelli</a>, artist, educator, and co-curator of A.T.A.'s&nbsp;<a href="https://gazefilmseries.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/pleasurepain/">GAZE</a>&nbsp;film series.<br />February 1: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-haroon-adalat_1.html">Haroon Adalat</a>, a&nbsp;<a href="http://hadalat.com/">designer</a>, illustrator and video editor.<br />February 1: <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-maureen-russell.html">Maureen Russell</a>, cinephile&nbsp;and Noir City film festival volunteer.<br />February 2:&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-ryland-walker-knight.html">Ryland Walker Knight</a>, a&nbsp;<a href="http://rylandwalkerknight.com/WORDS">writer</a>&nbsp;and filmmaker with a new short at <a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/no-land-without-evil/?instance_id=6291">SF IndieFest</a>.<br />February 2:&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-carl-martin.html">Carl Martin</a>, film projectionist and keeper of the FOFF <a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/">Bay Area Film Calendar</a>.<br />February 3:&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-claire-bain.html">Claire Bain</a>, an <a href="http://personbain-index.blogspot.com/">artist, filmmaker and writer</a>.<br />February 4:&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-brian-darr.html">Brian Darr</a>, a.k.a. yours truly. http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-3218437829414909705Wed, 04 Feb 2015 23:16:00 +00002015-02-04T15:16:46.637-08:00Argentine cinemaArtists' Television AccessCraig BaldwinDouglas FairbanksIOHTE 2014Jean-Luc GodardMizoguchiNew NothingNoir CityPFARoxieSilent Film FestivalStanfordYBCAIOHTE: Brian Darr<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>First, a hearty thank you to the seventeen other participants in 2014's "I Only Have Two Eyes" survey of Frisco Bay repertory and revival screenings; please check the final update of the <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">hub page</a> for links to each of their exceptionally diverse entries. I don't believe any film was mentioned by more than three participants, but there are certain trends; I feel like<i> film noir </i>was represented more than ever this time around, in keeping with its status as the Bay Area's seeming favorite repertory film genre.<br /><br />As for my own list. More than in other years, the bulk of it is made up of films I had little or no expectations for when I entered the cinema to see them. A good half of them were made by directors whose other work as director has eluded me so far, and I hold relatively few auteurist preconceptions about some of the other half's directors, either. I don't know why I cherished these surprises more than I did years-in-the-waiting screenings such as <i><b>Don't Look Now</b></i> at the Castro, other than to guess that expectations built up over too long a period of time can be impossible to fulfill; I did find <i><b>Don't Look Now </b></i>to be devastating and remarkable and if I'd seen it an earlier year I might well have placed it on my list even if the competition from other screenings was fiercer. But this year, I just feel more attached to the following screenings:<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NOhXlmgPY8E/VNB8bD9BgpI/AAAAAAAAH64/0nwRpTVvGFQ/s1600/neveropenthatdoor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NOhXlmgPY8E/VNB8bD9BgpI/AAAAAAAAH64/0nwRpTVvGFQ/s1600/neveropenthatdoor.jpg" /></a></div><i><b>Never Open That Door</b></i> (Carlos Hugo Christensen, 1952), Castro Theatre, January 30th, 2014. 35mm. Introduced by Eddie Muller.<br /><br />Noir City's 2014 festival was my favorite edition ever of Frisco Bay's highest-profile annual exhibition of cinema heritage. The international theme wasn't just window-dressing but a meticulously-crafted argument against the jingoistic notion that <i>film noir</i> was in essence a Hollywood construction, and I couldn't resist attending, for the first time, every single film shown during those ten days, including the Japanese and British films I'd seen on the Castro screen before or the ones I'd recently watched to prepare my <a href="https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/noir-city-12-here-and-there">Keyframe Daily</a> preview. Among the festival's high points was a final-day showing of Martin Scorsese's personal 35mm print of Josef Von Sternberg's Orientalist nightmare <i><b>The Shanghai Gesture</b></i>, but my very favorite experience of the 10-day <i>chiaroscuro </i>marathon was seeing the first of the three Argentine<i> noirs</i> presented for their first <i>gringo</i> audience in decades- if not ever. <i><b>Never Open That Door</b></i> is an elegant fusing of a pair of complimentary (one urban, one rural, etc.) Cornell Woolrich adaptations that simply oozed tenebrific dread and reminded me that John Alton spent several years working in Buenos Aires before making his mark on Hollywood; I don't know if this film's cinematographer Pablo Tabernero ever crossed paths with Alton, but I'm intrigued by his background; he appears to have been a German exile named Paul Weinschenk, who changed his name while making documentaries for the loyalists during the Spanish Civil War before heading to Argentina. I'm thrilled to learn via the <a href="http://www.noircity.com/noircityware.html">Noir City Annual #7</a> that this film is being restored with English subtitles (this screening was soft-titled) and better yet, reunited with another Christensen/Tabernero Woolrich adaptation called <i><b>If I Die Before I Wake</b></i>, and that screening foreign-language films at Noir City is not a one-year oddity but a new tradition.<br /><br /><i><b>Rich Kids</b></i> (Robert A. Young, 1979) Roxie Cinema, March 8th, 2014. 35mm. Introduced by Mike Keegan &amp; Jesse Hawthorne Ficks.<br /><br />San Francisco's longest-running cinema the Roxie has for various sensible (and regrettable) reasons moved away&nbsp; from screening much 35mm and 16mm in the past year, putting its energy into creative approaches to running a digital-era cinematheque with programs like <a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/international-film-noir/?instance_id=6630">this upcoming one</a>. But for five days, in anticipation of the local release of <i><b>The Grand Budapest Hotel</b></i>, the Mission venue threw a 35mm <a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/wes-anderson-35mm/">feast</a> of daily Wes Anderson features. This heartbreakingly hilarious and touching portrait of New York preteens from aristocratic but broken homes, an obvious touchstone for Anderson and/or frequent screenwriting partner Noah Baumbach, was nestled into the program one afternoon, and was a uniquely big-screen experience, as this reputed sole surviving widescreen print contains sequences cut from any panned-and-scanned video copies you might see floating around. Though directed by Young it was produced by Robert Altman when he was at the peak of his clout, and its approach to childhood feels more alien to modern filmmaking than Altman's own approach to environmental catastrophe that year (<i><b>Quintet</b></i>), and its showing helped set me on a path of Altman research and rediscovery that continued throughout much of the year and will pick back up again this month at <a href="http://www.ybca.org/altmanesque">Yerba Buena Center for the Arts</a>.<br /><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W0PzJ9rBKIA/VNCMaeuWWuI/AAAAAAAAH7I/dvh42TiyQHQ/s1600/passagealacte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W0PzJ9rBKIA/VNCMaeuWWuI/AAAAAAAAH7I/dvh42TiyQHQ/s1600/passagealacte.jpg" /></a></div><i><b>Passage à l'acte</b></i> (Martin Arnold, 1993) New Nothing Cinema, March 26th, 2014. 16mm. Introduced by Mark Wilson.<br /><br />As usual, a sizable portion of my viewing in 2014 was of the experimental film variety; screenings presented by familiar organizations like <a href="http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/2014/02/experiments-in-animation-thur-feb-20-8pm.html">Oddball Films</a>, the <a href="http://exploratorium.edu/visit/calendar/mike-henderson-films-june-4-2014">Exploratorium</a>, the <a href="http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN20829">Pacific Film Archive</a> and <a href="http://www.ybca.org/george-kuchar-reader">SF Cinematheque</a> each had a distinct impact on my wider appreciation of cinema history. But there's nothing like a new venue, even if it's one that's been around for a while like New Nothing in SOMA. I'd heard about this space for years, but it wasn't until last March that I learned exactly where it was, what it might screen, and how I might find myself there. The occasion was the second in a year-long series of salons presented by <a href="http://canyoncinema.com/category/canyon-cinema-salon/">Canyon Cinema</a> filmmakers invited to draw from the collection of prints held by this stalwart film institution (which ended 2014 with some wonderful <a href="http://canyoncinema.com/2015/02/02/george-lucas-family-foundation-donates-50000-to-canyon-cinema-foundation/">momentum</a>). I attended far too few of these programs, but I'm so glad I made it out for my friend <a href="http://canyoncinema.com/2014/03/20/vanishing-presence-a-program-of-films-selected-by-mark-wilson-canyon-cinema-salon-march-2014/">Mark Wilson</a>'s presentation of short investigations of human movement on screen. Martin Arnold in particular was a figure I'd long heard of but never seen for myself (like New Nothing) and to experience his optically-printed appropriation of an iconic Hollywood movie amidst great films by Ed Emshwiller and Jeanne Liotta felt like the ideal introduction to a master filmmaker's work. Although I do wonder how I would have reacted if I'd seen it when it was made in 1993, at a time I was immersing myself in industrial and other collage-oriented music but had yet to see my first Robert Mulligan film.<br /><br /><b><i>The Good Bad Man</i></b> (Allan Dwan, 1916) Castro Theatre, May 31, 2014. 35mm with piano accompaniment by Donald Sosin. Introduced by Dr. Tracey Goessel.<br /><br />As I noted in my <a href="https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/the-anita-monga-era-at-san-francisco-silent">preview piece</a> on the 19th San Francisco Silent Film Festival, the SFSFF has been slowly but surely funding and presenting new restorations of the early collaborations between beloved superstar Douglas Fairbanks and still-neglected auteur Allan Dwan (they ultimately completed eleven films together, culminating in the 1929 part-talkie <i><b>The Iron Mask</b></i>.) The third of these restorations is the earliest of the collaborations presented so far; <i><b>The Good Bad Man</b></i> was only the second Fairbanks/Dwan picture, after <i><b>The Habit of Happiness</b></i>, but the restoration looked impeccable for a 98-year-old film screening at only 16 frames per second; it surely didn't hurt that pianist Donald Sosin performed the musical accompaniment as if he were trying to show up all of the weekend's other fine musicians after a year on the bench (I think he succeeded).&nbsp; It also happens to be the best movie of the three, a perfectly balanced synthesis of Wild West action and romantic comedy. I've barely glimpsed Dwan's non-Fairbanks films, but with this I'm starting to get a sense of his spatial and structural sensibilities. It just so happens that another Dwan silent, this one starring Gloria Swanson rather than the King of Hollywood, screens this Saturday at the <a href="http://www.nilesfilmmuseum.org/february-2015.htm">Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum</a>. Tempting...<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lyhiAMg5ml0/VNCiT1hn1cI/AAAAAAAAH8M/idjQ0-S7moE/s1600/crucifiedlovers.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-lyhiAMg5ml0/VNCiT1hn1cI/AAAAAAAAH8M/idjQ0-S7moE/s1600/crucifiedlovers.bmp" height="296" style="cursor: move;" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Music Box DVD of The Story of Film</td></tr></tbody></table><i><b>Crucified Lovers: a Story from Chikamatsu</b></i> (Kenji Mizoguchi, 1954) Pacific Film Archive, July 30th, 2014. 35mm.<br /><br />Mizoguchi made some of the most emotionally potent political films ever, and this one, which I'd never seen before at all, edged ahead of my first 35mm viewing of his 1939 masterpiece <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Story of the Last Chrysanthemum</i>&nbsp;as the summit of my visits to the Pacific Film Archive's hearty <a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/mizoguchi_2014">director retrospective</a> last summer. The inexorability of unfolding events, each peeling another layer off the rotten onion of patriarchal feudalism, held me transfixed to the screen.<br /><br /><i><b>Only Yesterday </b></i>(John M. Stahl, 1933) Stanford Theatre, August 31st, 2014. 35mm.<br /><br />It seems incredible that two entirely different films could both share the same title; I saw Isao Takahata's coming-of-age animation from 1991 and put it on my IOHTE list <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-two-eyes-of-brian-darr.html">two years ago</a>, and now I've caught up with this pre-code Hollywood employer of the same English-language title, as part of a <a href="http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Summer%202014.html">Stanford Theatre</a>&nbsp;World War I weepie double-bill with <i style="font-weight: bold;">Random Harvest</i>. Calling Stahl's&nbsp;<i style="font-weight: bold;">Only Yesterday </i>a melodrama in today's age sounds like a dismissal, but in this case the heightened emotions of its characters, particularly the sublime Margaret Sullivan (in her debut screen role!) are transmitted directly to the audience, making for an intense experience akin to that conveyed by its later, more famous remake&nbsp;<i><b>Letter From An Unknown Woman</b></i>, (which I <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/01/letter-from-unknown-woman-1948.html">also</a> saw at the Stanford in 2014).<br /><br /><b><i>¡O No Coronado!</i></b> (Craig Baldwin, 1992) Artists' Television Access, September 19th, 2014. 16mm. Introduced by Craig Baldwin and Steve Polta.<br /><br />In 2014 my only "official" filmmaker interview was a mind-melting discussion with underground archivist and iconoclast <a href="http://eatdrinkfilms.com/2014/05/30/san-francisco-silent-film-festival-filmmakers-pick-a-conversation-with-craig-baldwin/">Craig Baldwin</a>, who summons the&nbsp;<a href="http://other%20cinema/">Other Cinema</a>&nbsp;screenings most Saturday nights at the increasingly incongruous (and thus culturally valuable) Valencia Street microcinema Artists' Television Access. I also finally caught up with most of his films that I hadn't seen before (I'm still on the hunt for the elusive <i><b>Stolen Movie</b></i>). I was able to see a majority of them on the A.T.A. screen, either as part of its <a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/09/30-hour-marathon-ata-lives/">30-hour marathon</a> (of which I survived about fifteen hours of before the dawn showing of Damon Packard's brilliant <b style="font-style: italic;">Reflections of Evil </b>sent me stumbling home for much needed sleep- or was it sanity) or <a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/09/craig-baldwin-sonic-outlaws-o-no-coronado-other-short-films/">this</a> <a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/09/craig-baldwins-sonic-outlaw/">pair</a> of programs.&nbsp;<i style="font-weight: bold;">¡O No Coronado!</i>, Baldwin's 40-minute sub-feature made to <strike>commemorate</strike> commiserate the&nbsp;Quincentenary of Christopher Columbus's famed voyage (by presenting the story of a very different <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_V%C3%A1zquez_de_Coronado">conqueror</a>), employs perhaps his most elaborate and "effective" staged footage, shuffled together with ludicrous and expensive Hollywood detritus. His juxtapositions pull the rubber mask off the history-as-mythology industry that seems to dominate our collective understandings of the past.<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kNJXKJWTgT8/VNCVazG0ePI/AAAAAAAAH7w/AqQ6MPA6zFo/s1600/littlefugitive.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kNJXKJWTgT8/VNCVazG0ePI/AAAAAAAAH7w/AqQ6MPA6zFo/s1600/littlefugitive.bmp" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Kino DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><i><b>Little Fugitive</b></i> (Morris Engel, Ruth Orkin &amp; Ray Ashley, 1953) Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, September 22nd, 2014. 35mm. Introduced by Lynn Cursaro.<br /><br />Full disclosure: of all the repertory/revival series of 2014, the one that loomed largest for me personally was one that I was honored to be chosen to be involved with myself: Joel Shepard of YBCA's gracious "<a href="http://www.ybca.org/invasion-cinemaniacs">Invasion of the Cinemaniacs!</a>" series, the film component of the museum's triennial Bay Area Now focus on local artists and art communities. Shepard selected eleven local cinephiles (including six previous IOHTE contributors) to present a carte-blanche choice of a film at the YBCA's technically excellent, intimate screening space. I was humbled to be chosen, and humbled again to find that my buddy <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-ryland-walker-knight.html">Ryland Walker Knight</a> mentioned my selection (Altman's <i><b>The Company</b></i>) in his own IOHTE wrap-up this year. A few of the other Cinemaniacs selections have been cited by IOHTE 2014 participants such as <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-carl-martin.html">Carl Martin</a> and <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-david-robson.html">David Robson</a>, but I'd like to single out a few that have been left unmentioned: Adam Hartzell's informed presentation of Korean drama <i><b>Madame Freedom</b></i>, Robson's lustrous program-closer <i><b>The Brides of Dracula</b></i>, and most importantly Lynn Cursaro's selection <i><b>Little Fugitive</b></i>, a wonderfully poetic, American-neorealist exploration of Coney Island through the eyes of a child who fears he might never be able to return home. Though co-directed by three filmmakers I was previously unfamiliar with, it's a film I've been waiting to see on the big screen for many years, ever since learning it was an early entry on the Library of Congress's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Film_Registry">National Film Registry</a>. Watching a 35mm print in a room (half) full of cinema devotees was worth the wait; this is clearly one of the great films of its time (when television was just growing out of being a seductive novelty) and place (on the opposite end of the country from Hollywood).<br /><br /><b><i>The Puppetmaster</i></b> (Hou Hsiao-Hsien, 1993) Pacific Film Archive, November 14th , 2014. 35mm. Introduced by Kathy Geritz and Richard Suchenski.<br /><br />This is the largest exception to the trend I mentioned in my introductory paragraphs: another film I'd been waiting for years to see on the big screen, in this case made by a director I already considered myself a committed fan of. In fact I'd hoped to see much more of the traveling <a href="http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/houhsiaohsien">Hou Hsiao-Hsien</a> series brought by Richard Suchenski to the PFA in the last months of 2014 than I did; I'd have liked to attend every screening but scheduling consigned me to seeing only five films in the program. <i><b>The Puppetmaster</b></i> was the most revelatory for me of the five (although <i><b>The Boys From Fengkuei</b></i> came close) in terms of my understanding of Hou, and indeed (as I noted on <a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/533684043993190401">twitter</a>), in terms of my understanding of biographical storytelling modes in general. This no-admission screening was nearly full, which was especially gratifying after Suchenski noted that he'd essentially built the Hou series around his desire to see this film in 35mm, that it'd taken two years to negotiate to show it, and that it (and <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/11/city-of-sadness-1989.html"><i><b>City of Sadness</b></i></a>) would certainly become completely unavailable to view on that format after the tour concludes at the end of this year. Which has me giving sidelong glances to airfares after looking at the rest of the <a href="http://www.bard.edu/cmia/publications/">schedule</a>...<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iACrLOwjMFU/VNCY_ED7lAI/AAAAAAAAH78/VGyT25K6_7M/s1600/bookofmary.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iACrLOwjMFU/VNCY_ED7lAI/AAAAAAAAH78/VGyT25K6_7M/s1600/bookofmary.bmp" height="481" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Cohen Media Group DVD</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><b><i>The Book of Mary</i></b> (Anne-Marie Miéville, 1985) Pacific Film Archive, November 29th, 2014. 35mm.<br /><br />My favorite new film seen in 2014 was Jean-Luc Godard's 3D <i><b>Goodbye To Language</b></i>, which I saw three times (once for each dimension?) at the Rafael Film Center, the only Frisco Bay cinema it played in time for me to put it on my <a href="http://yearendlists.com/2014/12/brian-darr-10-best-feature-films-of-2014/">Top Ten list</a> in time for&nbsp;<a href="https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/top-25-feature-films-of-2014?utm_medium=film_related_articles&amp;utm_source=fandor">Fandor</a>'s poll. (It screened at Berkeley's Shattuck Cinema in mid-December, and finally has its first showing in San Francisco at the <a href="https://twitter.com/castro_theatre/status/552209004017893376">Castro Theatre</a> tonight). But my 2014 Godard experience was not limited to his newest work; the Pacific Film Archive provided many opportunities for me to fill gaps and revisit old favorites throughout the year, and I only wish I'd taken advantage of more of them (on the bright side the series is <a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/jeanluc_godard_spring15">continuing</a> through April.) Some of the films felt more impenetrable than wonderful, but they all had a touch of both qualities. Most pleasantly surprising, however, was the fact that my very favorite entry in the whole series was directed not by Godard, but by his longtime collaborative companion Anne-Marie Miéville, and screened, as it customarily does, before his 1985 release <i><b>Hail Mary</b></i>. It's a perfectly-realized short film, simultaneously naturalistic and expressionistic in its presenting a young girl's perspective on her parents' crumbling marriage (don't ask me why this theme recurs on this list.) Miéville is particularly gifted at framing her subject's body in motion, as in the above-pictured scene where she moves along to a section of Mahler's 9th Symphony. I attribute to <b><i>The Book of Mary</i></b>'s effectiveness as a prelude the fact that I found <i><b>Hail Mary</b></i> to be my own favorite of the Godard films I saw at the PFA last year.http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-brian-darr.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-5111671059850832923Tue, 03 Feb 2015 18:42:00 +00002015-02-03T22:37:25.357-08:00Artists' Television AccessBalboaIOHTE 2014Ray HarryhausenSF CinemathequeIOHTE: Claire Bain<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Contributor</span></i> <i>Claire Bain is an <a href="http://personbain-index.blogspot.com/">artist, filmmaker and writer</a>. She is a frequent contributor to the <a href="http://www.atasite.org/blog/">Artists Television Access blog</a>, and most of the links below lead to her writings on the&nbsp; screenings there.</i> <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://images-blogger-opensocial.googleusercontent.com/gadgets/proxy?url=http%3A%2F%2F2.bp.blogspot.com%2F-iLMfC7cbJLM%2FVM72a4B2kwI%2FAAAAAAAAH58%2FGArSFN1-3Tk%2Fs1600%2Fscreamingqueens.tiff&amp;container=blogger&amp;gadget=a&amp;rewriteMime=image%2F*" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-iLMfC7cbJLM/VM72a4B2kwI/AAAAAAAAH58/GArSFN1-3Tk/s1600/screamingqueens.tiff" height="302" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Frameline DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><br /><b><i><a href="http://spi-group.blogspot.com/2015/01/night-at-diner-when-it-all-blew-up.html">Screaming Queens: the Riot at Comption's Cafeteria</a></i></b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> (directed by Susan Stryker &amp; Victor Silverman, 2005), A.T.A. <span style="font-family: inherit;">January 25,<span style="font-family: inherit;"> 2014</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/09/views-from-the-marshall-webers-beautiful-losers-at-todays-marathon-a-gold-mine-of-recent-local-history/">30 hour marathon</a></span>, A.T.A. September 5-6, 2014<br /><br /><a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/07/marya-krogstads-figurations-at-artists-television-access/">Marya Krogstad</a>, A.T.A. July 14, 2014<br /><br /><a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/06/u-matic-night-july-3-open-screening-8pm/#comment-18060">U-Matic Night</a>, A.T.A. July 3, 2014<br /><br /><a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/04/im-not-an-oppressed-person-but-i-play-one-in-the-media/">Fred Alvarado</a>, A.T.A. April 4, 2014<br /><br /><b><i><a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/03/thick-relations-2/">Thick Relations</a></i></b>, A.T.A. March 21, 2014<br /><br /><a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/02/see-also-speaking-directly-alley-cat/">Speaking Directly</a>, Alley Cat Books presentation from SF Cinematheque. February 14, 2014<br /><br /><b><i><a href="http://www.atasite.org/2014/08/sistha-sinema-reaching-for-the-moon/#comment-18062">Reaching For the Moon</a></i></b><span style="font-family: inherit;">, A.T.A. August 21, 201<span style="font-family: inherit;">4</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;</span></span><br /><div dir="ltr" id="yiv8708586130yui_3_16_0_1_1421301805875_2908" style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">&nbsp; And one last one, not from a blog:</span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv8708586130yui_3_16_0_1_1421301805875_2908" style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v_xNKSEruk0/VM8EmizRO4I/AAAAAAAAH6o/tX78jgvHnfU/s1600/valleyofgwangi.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v_xNKSEruk0/VM8EmizRO4I/AAAAAAAAH6o/tX78jgvHnfU/s1600/valleyofgwangi.bmp" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Warner DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">One cool Saturday April morning I drove my tired ass to meet a friend at the Balboa Theater's Popcorn Palace, their true Saturday matinee ("matin" means morning in French) where 10 bucks gets you admission and endless popcorn. I met a friend who is a Ray Harryhausen fan, to see <b><i>The Valley of Gwangi</i></b>. I expected kids to be running up and down the aisles, but there were only adults, more than a handful of fully mature ones. The movie had a compelling mix of intense characters, including a badass cowgirl boss, a miniature horse, and then some dinosaurs. The epic battle near the end had spellbinding cinematography and nicely blended (not digital, no no no this was long before) effects that occasionally had alluring rhythms that made me think of loops in the optical printer (analog re-photographing apparatus for creating/blending special effects on film). Hilariously creative, it's a movie worth seeing, especially if you can catch it in a theater on some rare occasion. But I do recommend the Balboa Theater's Popcorn Palace!</span></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-claire-bain.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-5554381035508650356Tue, 03 Feb 2015 00:53:00 +00002015-02-02T16:53:00.032-08:00CastroIOHTE 2014Noir CityPFARoxieSilent Film FestivalYBCAIOHTE: Carl Martin<i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span></div></div></div></div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Contributor</span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;Carl Martin is a film projectionist &amp; keeper of the Film On Film Foundation's indispensable <a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/">Bay Area Film Calendar</a>.</span></i></div></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">jan 22 @ the castro: <b><i>the fortune</i></b>: taking its place among the best '70's prohibition-era-nostalgia pictures (<b><i>at long last love</i></b>, <b><i>the night they raided minsky's</i></b>), this screwball delight channels preston sturges, embracing the escalatory power of the long take. in one memorable scene, jack nicholson, warren beatty, and stockard channing get upstaged by a flying sandwich.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p9jU65Gi6DA/VMqqNYTtrDI/AAAAAAAAH4I/_3B14bScdSQ/s1600/deathisacaress.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p9jU65Gi6DA/VMqqNYTtrDI/AAAAAAAAH4I/_3B14bScdSQ/s1600/deathisacaress.jpg" height="245" width="320" /></span></a></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">jan 28 @ the castro:<i>&nbsp;</i><b style="font-style: italic;">death is a caress</b><b style="font-style: italic;">&nbsp;</b>(<b style="font-style: italic;">døden er et kjærtegn</b>): presented as a norwegian noir, its characters are damned by their own choices, not by fate or censorship board. a refreshingly frank film.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">feb 7 @ pfa: <b><i>strange impersonation</i></b>: strange indeed. a dozen b-picturesworth of absurd plot contrivances are packed into one movie. the female scientists are guileful and beguiling, the men all bumbling fools. surely it can't be real!</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">march 26 @ the roxie (16mm):<i> <b>the argyle secrets</b></i>: this is a mean and nasty little movie! when the hero's progress is impeded by a perfectly innocent woman--and he knows she's done nothing wrong--he punches her lights out. whoa!</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">june 1 @ the castro:<i style="font-weight: bold;">&nbsp;harbor drift </i>(<i style="font-weight: bold;">jenseits der straße</i>): i only remember bits and snatches of this slice of society's underbelly: a necklace, a man reading the paper. but it was dynamic and beautiful and it moved me.</span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KsQFfWLyIhU/VM8CbXnOqsI/AAAAAAAAH6c/C4w8_HflVPM/s1600/vigilante.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-KsQFfWLyIhU/VM8CbXnOqsI/AAAAAAAAH6c/C4w8_HflVPM/s1600/vigilante.bmp" height="136" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Blue Underground DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">aug 15 @ ybca: <b><i>vigilante</i></b>: i checked and i didn't include this one in 2009. in this underachieving year, it makes the cut. once again william lustig's violent revengesploitation film bowled me over. robert forster is a badass and rutanya alda, as his ill-fated wife, is revelatory.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">sept 19 @ the castro: <b><i>coal miner's daughter</i></b>: sissy spacek, beverly d'angelo (who both do their own singing), the ever-reliable tommy lee jones, and, in his debut dramatic role, levon helm, all turn in stellar work in this most excellent of musical biopics. if there's a sugar coating it's a thin one.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">nov 3, private screening: <b><i>point break</i></b>: finally caught up with this one. patrick swayze mesmerizes as the leader/guru to a band of new-agey wave riders in kathryn bigelow's strange, mythic vision of surf culture.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-6YZNvP8yRD8/VMwPpWnvjZI/AAAAAAAAH4Y/bAhxALmfWBM/s1600/minnie%26moskowitz.png" height="220" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Anchor Bay DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">nov 7 @ the castro: <b><i>minnie and moskowitz</i></b>: this filled a hole in my cassavetes viewing. seymour cassel is a madman. in one intense scene, he seems genuinely surprised at his own impulsive action, which ends up messing up the continuity of the picture. no matter, it's a hell of a moment. bonus points for the timothy carey scene.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">dec 5 @ roxie (16mm): <i><b>crime wave</b></i>: john paizs's wildly inventive, budget-transcending tale of a screen-writer's travails, seen through the admiring eyes of a 13-year-old girl, manages to be sweetly innocent and yet not at all innocent. he avoids solipsism and even steps into lynchian territory, around the time that lynch himself is just dipping his toes in.</span>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-carl-martin.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-2255501403313779337Mon, 02 Feb 2015 16:38:00 +00002015-02-02T12:48:48.707-08:00CastroIndiefestIOHTE 2014YBCAIOHTE: Ryland Walker Knight<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></div><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Contributor</span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> Ryland W<span style="font-family: inherit;">alker Knight <span style="font-family: inherit;">is a <a href="http://rylandwalkerknight.com/WORDS">writer</a> and <a href="http://rylandwalkerknight.com/FILMS">filmmaker</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span>His latest shor<span style="font-family: inherit;">t film </span></span></span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Inside Voices</b></span></span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b> </b>screens at <a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/no-land-without-evil/?instance_id=6291">SF IndieFest</a></span></span></span></span></i><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> <span style="font-family: inherit;">this month.</span> </span></span></i><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mji6uWTL22Y/VM78PWTD0jI/AAAAAAAAH6M/_w3gLcmrN5U/s1600/streetsoffire.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-mji6uWTL22Y/VM78PWTD0jI/AAAAAAAAH6M/_w3gLcmrN5U/s1600/streetsoffire.bmp" height="230" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Winner World Korea DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My favorite repertory screening in 2014 was seeing <i><b><a href="http://neonmarquee.com/2014/08/18/rare-35mm-prints-at-the-castro-sf/">Streets of Fire</a></b></i> at The Castro on 35mm. Somehow, I’d never seen this Walter Hill classic before, and I can easily say it was the most fun I had at the movies in that last calendar. A couple beers helped, as did the presence of my best friend, but the film is a welcome antecedent to whatever it is Tarantino’s up to with his “Westerns”, except this one is pure fantasy in dramaturgy as well as genre tropes<span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span> </span></span></span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The other great experience was re-seeing Robert Altman’s <b><i><a href="http://www.ybca.org/the-company">The Company</a></i></b>, which I have our host to thank for, and a big thanks it is. The last time I saw the film was on a DVD, before I “came of age” in my cinephilia, and as such it felt like a whole new film for me. I want to say I saw it in theatres, but I cannot say that with confidence, so I’m going to tell myself this was the first time I saw it on film, and I love those early-aughts digital films printed to celluloid for how the process transformed the quite common artifacting into rare textures of emulsion—a blown out light source becomes a flash of burnt celluloid where the white bleeds blue and red in an instant. It’s a mistake in a lot of professional registers, I suppose, but what a lovely index of pure presence, announcing the document and its artificiality equally<span style="font-family: inherit;">.</span> </span></span></span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">My greatest regret when it comes to my 2014 repertory notebook is how thin it is, as seems the case with me each year this decade. I feel at fault, indebted so much to this art, not doing my part to sustain my ardor, especially when the PFA ran so many Godards on 35. Then again, we see what we want to, and I cannot complain about what I did venture forth to seek on screens.</span></span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-ryland-walker-knight.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-4693684663374055453Mon, 02 Feb 2015 03:05:00 +00002015-02-01T19:13:36.960-08:00CAAM FestCastroCity Lights BooksI Wake Up DreamingIOHTE 2014Noir CityRoxieSFIFF57Silent Film FestivalIOHTE: Maureen Russell<i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Are</i><i>a</i><i>&nbsp;cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><i>Contributor&nbsp;</i></span>Maureen Russell is&nbsp;a cinephile&nbsp;</i><i>and Noir City film festiv</i><i>al volunteer.</i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><br /></i></div>There is a lot of noir on my list for 2014. <br /><div id="yiv6136450612yui_3_16_0_1_1421285032214_23999" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; margin: 0in 0in 0pt;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q8OnFVh_ro4/VMipTDkf6LI/AAAAAAAAH1E/hNpaZEx0Dnk/s1600/victimsofsin.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-q8OnFVh_ro4/VMipTDkf6LI/AAAAAAAAH1E/hNpaZEx0Dnk/s1600/victimsofsin.bmp" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Strand DVD of Victims Of Sin</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">1)&nbsp;</span><a href="http://www.noircity.com/nc12p1.html">Noir City 12</a>– The Castro Theatre, Jan. 24 – Feb. 2 <br />The theme of international noir brought rarities and classics from around the globe. Seeing French alongside American, British, rare Argentinian and European selections provided great context, as filmmakers adapted what others were doing and made their own mark. Highlights include the Kurosawa directing Toshiro Mifune double feature <i><b>Stray Dog</b></i> (1949) with <i><b>Drunken Angel (</b></i>1948) and the wildly fun Mexican musical noir <b><i>Victims of Sin</i></b> / <b><i>Victimas del Pecado </i></b>(1951) with great music and dance numbers.<br /><br />2) SF Silent Film Fest<br />Highlights: the creative Russian film&nbsp;<b><i><a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/the-extraordinary-adventures-of-mr-west-in-the-land-of-the-bolsheviks">The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks</a></i></b>, USSR (1924). Musical Accompaniment by the Matti Bye Ensemble <br /><span id="yiv6136450612yui_3_16_0_1_1421285032214_23986"><i><b><br /></b></i></span><span id="yiv6136450612yui_3_16_0_1_1421285032214_23986"><i><b>Underground</b></i>, UK (1928). Directed by Anthony Asquith, Musical Accompaniment by multi-instrumentalist Stephen Horne. This love triad turns dark, set in working class London with beautiful cinematography. &nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><span id="yiv6136450612yui_3_16_0_1_1421285032214_23986"><br /></span><span id="yiv6136450612yui_3_16_0_1_1421285032214_23986">Also <i><b>Dragnet Girl,</b></i> Japan (1933). Directed by Yasujiro Ozu, Musical Accompaniment by Guenter Buchwald</span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F0EvXNhKmeU/VMlotPXFsbI/AAAAAAAAH1U/J-l9jI8zg6E/s1600/witnessinthecity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F0EvXNhKmeU/VMlotPXFsbI/AAAAAAAAH1U/J-l9jI8zg6E/s1600/witnessinthecity.jpg" height="247" width="320" /></a></div><span style="font-family: inherit;">3)&nbsp;</span><span id="yiv6136450612yui_3_16_0_1_1421285032214_23946"><a href="http://midcenturyproductions.com/index.html">The French Had a Name for It /&nbsp;</a></span><span id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421883402428_25915"><a href="http://midcenturyproductions.com/index.html">French Film Noir 1946-64</a></span><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"></span>San Francisco's Roxie Theatre from November 14-17<br />Great festival with many sold-out screenings. My favorite was <i><b>Witness in the City</b></i> (<i><b>Un Temoin Dans La Ville</b></i>) (1959) for its story, characters, tension, location shooting and chase scenes through the streets of Paris, and beautiful cinematography. <br /><br />4) <b><i>A Hard Day’s Night</i></b> (1964) New 4K restoration for the 50th Anniversary – The Castro Theatre<br />A double bill with Richard Lester’s next film, <i><b>The Knack…and how to get it</b></i> (’65). Seeing the beautiful restoration, I wasn’t sure if I’d even seen this on the big screen. The audience seemed to be thoroughly enjoying the Fab 4 as much as I was. <i><b>The Knack</b></i> is a farce set in Swinging London. <br /><br />5) <b><i>Marketa Lazarova </i></b>(1967) – the Roxie 7/14 – new 35mm print Czechoslovakia I hadn’t heard of this classic Czech film before. Medieval setting shot using inventive technique. <br /><br />6) Double feature at&nbsp;<a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/brainstorm-couch/">I Wake Up Dreaming</a>&nbsp;noir festival, 5/25 – The Roxie<br /><b><i>Brainstorm</i></b>. Directed by William Conrad. (1965)<br /><i><b>The Couch</b></i>. Directed by Owen Crump. (1962) <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ous14kwPX4A/VMio-c3JgXI/AAAAAAAAH08/ilSUWxfW1_k/s1600/theunknown.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ous14kwPX4A/VMio-c3JgXI/AAAAAAAAH08/ilSUWxfW1_k/s1600/theunknown.bmp" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Warner DVD</td></tr></tbody></table>7) <i><b>The Unknown</b></i> (Director Tod Browning, 1927, USA, with Lon Chaney and Joan Crawford)<br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.sffs.org/festival-home/attend/film-guide/stephin-merritt-with-the-unknown#.VLcsFS6GnL8">SFIFF</a>&nbsp;– The Castro 5/6/14 – Silent film with live accompaniment by Stephin Merritt&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Shown with Guy Maddin's short <b><i>Sissy Boy Slap Party</i></b> (1995)&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’d seen this film before: great characters, visuals and acting, with darkness and humor that Chaney and Browning can give.&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: inherit;">8) <b><i>Inland Empire</i></b> (2006)&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Roxie 7/22&nbsp;</span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">David Lynch’s own 35mm print screened. I had never seen this and was waiting to watch it on the big screen.&nbsp;</span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0AgxqsryCpI/VM7kwgqEThI/AAAAAAAAH5s/y27so3KKgoc/s1600/kingboxer.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0AgxqsryCpI/VM7kwgqEThI/AAAAAAAAH5s/y27so3KKgoc/s1600/kingboxer.png" height="171" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Celestial DVD</td></tr></tbody></table>9) <b><i>King Boxer</i></b> (Five Fingers of Death) – Hong Kong, 1972<br />CAAM Fest – Great Star Theater 3/14/14 – Run Run Shaw Tribute<br />Released in the USA by Warner Bros. in March 1973, the film was responsible for beginning the North American kung fu film craze of the 1970s.<br /><br />10)&nbsp;<a href="http://www.citylights.com/info/?fa=event&amp;event_id=2016">Burroughs at 100: The Films of William S Burroughs</a><br />February 3, 2014. City Lights Bookstore, with commentary by Mindaugis Bagdon.<br />A screening of the William S Burrough's films <b><i>Towers Open Fire</i></b>, <b><i>The Cut-Ups</i></b>, and <i><b>Bill and Tony</b></i>. (early 60s). It was great to be able to see entire short films using the cut-up technique, even if at least one film tested your patience. http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-maureen-russell.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-3928308796627205143Sun, 01 Feb 2015 18:05:00 +00002015-02-01T10:07:31.935-08:00CastroIOHTE 2014Noir CityPFAStanfordYBCAIOHTE: Haroon Adalat<div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</span></i></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></i></div></div></div></div></div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Contributor Haroon Adalat is a&nbsp;<a href="http://hadalat.com/">designer</a>, illustrator and video editor.&nbsp;</span></i></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">From my perch now, my previous year could be characterized as one of recoil. Programming in the area was overwhelmingly lavish: for one, the Pacific Film Archive presenting the majority of works from Satyajit Ray, JL Godard and Kenji Mizoguchi on 35mm certainly left me feeling spoiled! And yet, 2014 was the year I kept my moviegoing to a (relative) minimum. Between a steady increase in digital projections, a constant lack of funds, and -- quite simply -- exhaustion, I stuck to the old-reliables or stayed home; and upon reflection, I missed things I regret immensely now...</span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sZPeQLsARuY/VMA7CMD1PWI/AAAAAAAAHvs/noeU04OqUDY/s1600/normallove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sZPeQLsARuY/VMA7CMD1PWI/AAAAAAAAHvs/noeU04OqUDY/s1600/normallove.jpg" height="214" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Normal Love image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">But, what do I remember? In 2014, there were several radiant and sublime and quite singular "discoveries". Sometime in October, Jerome Hiler (not unlike Nathaniel Dorsky) ushered in that magical, sweet, sustained silence that falls on rare screenings at the PFA. Much earlier across the bay, Jack Smith was twitching to life on new prints at the YBCA throughout January. I learned that there is often treachery when returning to objects of our past. I find the word “restoration” to be a bit dubious now. Of the films I revisited -- some for the very first time on a large screen -- my opinion of many slipped (yet, for others my affection renewed and doubled: <b><i>Fellini Satyricon</i></b>, the numerous Resnais films that graced local screens). In 2014, I settled on a drag name, GRETA GARBAGE (no, she doesn't have much of a personality or any gigs yet). She does possess a cache of images to cull from, though: few pleasures match the sight of Gene Tierney's darling face lit by Von Sternberg in <b><i>The Shanghai Gesture</i></b>, or Marlene Dietrich's supreme swagger as she races atop a man's back across a saloon during a rowdy flashback from <b><i>Rancho Notorious</i></b> (lessons to be learned, certainly...). I used "recoil" earlier as my suggestion for all those many things I avoided or merely ignored, but the following list should stand for the strands I still find enriching and confounding - the type of stuff that had me smiling on my bus commute last summer, or helped me pass time while waiting at a bar for a friend the day after that torrential storm in mid-December. In other words, the delightful things.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g5MSvLhu9Mk/VMn9skXS0KI/AAAAAAAAH30/KxyB-Uc6Z6M/s1600/losangelesplaysitself9.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-g5MSvLhu9Mk/VMn9skXS0KI/AAAAAAAAH30/KxyB-Uc6Z6M/s1600/losangelesplaysitself9.bmp" height="240" width="320" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Screen capture from Cinema Guild DVD</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1)</span><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Los Angeles Plays Itself&nbsp;</span></b><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(2003; Thom Anderson; Castro Theatre; digital) </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(2) </span><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Flaming Creatures&nbsp;</span></b><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">No President&nbsp;</span></b><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Normal Love&nbsp;</span></b><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1963-1967; Jack Smith; YBCA; 16mm) </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(3) </span><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">In the Stone House&nbsp;</span></b><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">New Shores&nbsp;</span></b><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1967-2012; Jerome Hiler; PFA; 16mm)</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QSuWzUIRb6Y/VMA2Vgi1R_I/AAAAAAAAHvg/Xjfn4DKCZ90/s1600/satyricon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-QSuWzUIRb6Y/VMA2Vgi1R_I/AAAAAAAAHvg/Xjfn4DKCZ90/s1600/satyricon.jpg" height="286" width="640" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Fellini Satyricon image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(4) &nbsp;</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Chelsea Girls&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1966; Andy Warhol; Castro Theatre; dual 16mm projection)&nbsp;</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Fellini Satyricon&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1968; Federico Fellini; Castro Theatre; 35mm)&nbsp;</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(5)&nbsp;</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Je t'aime je t'aime&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1968; Alain Resnais; Castro Theatre; 35mm) &nbsp;</span></div><div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(6) &nbsp;</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Rancho Notorious&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1952; Fritz Lang; Castro Theatre; 35mm) &nbsp;</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Johnny Guitar</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1954; Nicholas Ray; Castro Theatre; DCP) &nbsp;</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(7)&nbsp;</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Boy Meets Girl</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Lovers on the Bridge&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1984/1991; Leos Carax; Castro Theatre; DCP/35mm)&nbsp;</span></div><div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_dhwaiPeLZc/VMwyjjmixqI/AAAAAAAAH5I/gQajhpoq87U/s1600/worldofapu.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_dhwaiPeLZc/VMwyjjmixqI/AAAAAAAAH5I/gQajhpoq87U/s1600/worldofapu.bmp" height="302" width="400" /></span></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; font-size: x-small;">Screen capture from Sony Pictures Classics DVD of Apu Sansar</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(8)&nbsp;</span><br /><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Pather Panchali&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Aparajito&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Apu Sansar&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1955/1957/1959; Satyajit Ray; PFA; 35mm) &nbsp;</span><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(9) &nbsp;</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Macao&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Shanghai Gesture</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1952/1941; Josef von Sternberg; Castro Theatre, Noir City; 35mm) &nbsp;&nbsp;</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(10)&nbsp;</span></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">The Exile&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">Letter From An Unkown Woman&nbsp;</span></b></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">(1947/1948; Max Ophuls; YBCA/Stanford; 35mm) </span></div></div></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/02/iohte-haroon-adalat_1.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-2583040808163913585Sun, 01 Feb 2015 05:07:00 +00002015-01-31T21:07:09.983-08:00Artists' Television AccessGeorge KucharIOHTE 2014MizoguchiPFARafaelSF CinemathequeSilent Film FestivalYBCAIOHTE: Adrianne Finelli<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i></span></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; text-align: left;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Contributor Adrianne Finelli is an artist, curator, educator &amp; film lover. She co-curates the GAZE film series at Artist Television Access; its next screening is&nbsp;<a href="https://gazefilmseries.wordpress.com/2015/01/25/pleasurepain/">February 13</a>.</i></span></div><div style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><i><br /></i></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">After a couple years of extended visits to the Bay Area, this past June I relocated here for love. Fortunately for me, my love of film is flourishing here as well. In the summer sun, my partner and I drove 2600 miles across the country straight to the Pacific Film Archive. Having only been here for six months of this year, I feel like I’ve missed a lot of treasures, but I’m grateful that I was able to see what I did. I’m looking forward to seeing much more in 2015. As requested by Brian Darr, whose film blog has become one of my bookmarks, here’s my list of my 10 favorite repertory film screenings of last year. Thanks to Brian and Hell on Frisco Bay for the invitation.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Favorites are fun, but they’re always so hard to whittle down:</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nMJwj-YQgqw/VMGnQYFUKRI/AAAAAAAAHwM/5zBa5dwLVgY/s1600/sistersofgion.bmp" height="240" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Screen capture from Eclipse DVD</span></td></tr></tbody></table><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><br /><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">1) <b><i>Sisters of Gion</i></b>&nbsp;</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan, 1936)&nbsp;</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Pacific Film Archive &nbsp;</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">This was my first opportunity to see a Mizoguchi film on the big screen; this screening also marked my first week in the area as an official resident. Apart from that, the film, <b><i>Sisters of Gion</i></b>, may be my favorite of his works and is a quintessential feminist film. Rebellious and decades ahead of its time, a critique of traditions and the clash of eras—the film looks deep into the lives and issues that the women of the Geisha tradition faced. Mizoguchi’s empathy is with the lives sold and not the salesman that are buying. Oh, that ending. &nbsp;</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">2) <b><i>A Woman of Rumor&nbsp;</i></b></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Kenji Mizoguchi (Japan, 1954)&nbsp;</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Pacific Film Archive &nbsp;</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">Another poignant Mizoguchi feature about the personal lives of sex workers in Tokyo, that pays special attention to issues of what it means for these businesswomen to age. A fascinating portrait of two generations of women, somewhat <b><i>Mildred Pierce</i></b>, tragic drama of a mother and daughter in love with the same man. However, Mizoguchi does not let the man get off so easy, as the daughter’s love and empathy for her mother as a fellow woman grows and strengthens their bond. Such a beautiful film on so many levels, stunning and more mature camera, art direction and editing.</div><div><br /></div><br /><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3H38W_KXapU/VMGnTjJ4xuI/AAAAAAAAHwU/_eylLuoaB1I/s1600/magdanasdonkey.PNG" height="308" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Screen capture from Ruscico DVD</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">3) <i><b>Magdana’s Donkey</b></i>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tengiz Abuladze, Rezo Chkeidze (USSR, 1955)&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pacific Film Archive &nbsp;</div><div><div style="text-align: left;">Simple and beautiful—a story about a working class widow and her day to day struggles to provide for her children. The family’s luck changes when they nurse an abandoned and abused donkey back to health, allowing Magdana to transport and sell more yogurt, but then she is brought to trial for stealing the donkey. There is definite documentary influence in this neorealistic drama, yet the rich black &amp; white cinematography has its own style. I would love to see this film screened along side Bresson’s 1966 <b><i>Au hazard Balthazar</i></b>—donkeys might be the most honest animals in cinema. &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">4) <b><i>Sikkim&nbsp;</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Satyajit Ray (India, 1971)&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pacific Film Archive &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">I am so glad that I caught this, I had no idea how much I would learn and love about this film. A documentary about the sovereignty of Sikkim, a kingdom in the Himalayas situated between China and Indian, commissioned by the King of Sikkim and later banned until 2010. All copies were thought to be destroyed until one was uncovered at the British Film Institute. Very lyrical camera and sound—it’s more like a personal essay than a typical anthropological documentary of a foreign culture. Satyajit Ray’s refreshing and candid portrait has real heart and respect for the people and their traditions.</div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-VGvbNKSrP0o/VMinqr-gIwI/AAAAAAAAH0w/OmV94utS5VI/s1600/losthorizon.bmp" height="240" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Screen capture from Columbia DVD</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;">5) <i><b>Lost Horizon </b></i>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Frank Capra (USA, 1937)&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Smith Rafael Film Center &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">One of the few Capra films I had never seen, and maybe the strangest. <b><i>Lost Horizon</i></b> is a utopian film about an archetypal crew of five western passengers whose flight is hijacked and crashes somewhere in the Himalayan Mountains. The group is then escorted through the terrifying yet beautiful terrain to a magical palace—a warm and plentiful oasis from the harshness of the surroundings—known as Shangri-La. A dreamlike paradise where time is for passions and beauty, and no one ages. The story is bizarre and has a lot of political and social commentary embedded in it, and the set design and photography are worthy of seeing for their own merits.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">6) A Night at the Cinema in 1914&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">SF Silent Film Festival, Silent Autumn 2014&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Castro Theater &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">A delightful collection of eclectic silent short films that were all produced in 1914 with live musical accompaniment by the brilliant Donald Sosin. A few of my favorite shorts to make note of are: <b><i>Palace Pandemonium</i></b>, a newsreel of Emmeline Pankhurst and 50 other suffragettes being arrested at Buckingham Palace; <i><b>Lieutenant Pimple and the Stolen Submarine</b></i>, endearing cardboard sets and lots of quirkiness; and The Perils of Pauline directed by Louis J. Gasnier and starring the adventurous Pearl White as a woman who wants to explore life before she gets married. &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">However, the short that really stood out, <i><b>Daisy Doodad’s Dial</b></i> directed by Florence Turner, who also starred in the film as the main protagonist. A super silly, sassy and creative little tale about a couple that enters a face-pulling contest. The story employs a great use of the close-up and superimposition. The score that Donald Sosin composed for this film was half the joy of watching it, I wouldn’t want to see it any other way. One of my favorite things I’ve seen all year, and it was made in 1914!</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">7) <b><i>Molba</i></b>&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Tengiz Abuladze (USSR, 1967)&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pacific Film Archive &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Like a poem in black &amp; white, a visual metaphor with absolutely stunning cinematography and editing. Definitely one of the most unique films I have seen this year, and a film that most be seen in a dark theater, on a big screen, and on 35mm.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gp3GPY4h0SU/VMnycF3-PFI/AAAAAAAAH20/pFNzekMV64w/s1600/corruptionofthedamned.png" height="253" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Screen capture from Indiepix DVD of It Came From Kuchar</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-gp3GPY4h0SU/VMnycF3-PFI/AAAAAAAAH20/pFNzekMV64w/s1600/corruptionofthedamned.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"></span></a>8) A Criminal Account of Pleasure: The George Kuchar Reader with Andrew Lampert &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Yerba Buena Center for the Arts&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Presented by SF Cinematheque&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>Corruption of the Damned</i></b> (USA, 1965)&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>The Exiled Files of Eddie Gray </i></b>(USA, 1997) &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">What can I say? If you are not a Kuchar fan, then this isn’t for you. If you are, you should definitely pickup a copy of the <i>The George Kuchar Reader</i> edited by Andrew Lampert before it’s out of print. It’s an amazingly rich collection of journal entries, drawings, scripts, photos and other findings compiled into an impressive 336-page volume. I was so glad that I made it out to the event; Steve Polta of SF Cinematheque gave a moving account of George and introduced Andrew Lampert to read a few excerpts before the screening.<i><b> Corruption of the Damned </b></i>was screened on a 16mm print from Anthology Film Archives. It features a very baby-faced George in all his campy glory, and was a much more scripted and serious production than most of his later works. The pairing of this early film with <b><i>The Exiled Files of Eddie Gray</i></b>, a even more campy revisit or remake of sorts with some the original cast from the 1965 film, made the night for me. Shedding light, or rather pouring it, onto issues of aging and sexuality, through crude reenactments of love scenes from 32 years ago. There are no words to describe the fabulous Floraine Connors, I laughed so hard I cried. &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">9) <b><i>Flight of the Sparrows&nbsp;</i></b></div><div style="text-align: left;">Teimur Babluani (USSR, 1980)&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pacific Film Archive &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">The first several minutes I was sure I disliked this film; it felt like a not-so-great student film—clunky, bad acting, horrible lighting. After letting my expectations drop, I was taken by surprise at what turned into a really dynamic camera matched by a fresh, beat driven pace. The story is really simple, but weird and oddly poetic and bittersweet. There are two men traveling on a crowded third-class passenger train among a large cast of characters whose diverse profiles become fixtures in the background of the confined camera. The two men are opposites, one a rough-looking rebel of few words whose only friend is the tiny sparrow he carries next to his heart, and the other a pretentious, bragging traveling salesman that leads people to believe he is a world renown opera singer. The final scene shifts to a barren landscape and a surprising battle ensues. &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp;</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ps2Z32ubX6s/VM2qwAE1UyI/AAAAAAAAH5Y/Ey3NVUsEFpk/s1600/desirepie.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ps2Z32ubX6s/VM2qwAE1UyI/AAAAAAAAH5Y/Ey3NVUsEFpk/s1600/desirepie.tiff" height="149" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Screen capture from&nbsp;<a href="http://vimeo.com/27073204">vimeo trailer</a>&nbsp;for Desire Pie</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">10) Radical Sex Educational Films from San Francisco’s Multi-Media Resource Center&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Curated by Herb Shellenberger&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Yerba Buena Center for the Arts &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A curious and alluring collection of extraordinarily artistic and avant-garde Sex Ed films, like a time capsule into a different, more radical era. I imagine we would all be better, more inventive lovers if we had the occasion to see these films in our health classes. Although every film different and compelling in its own right, three films really resonated and charmed me. The program opened with Jerry Abrams’ <b><i>Eyetoon</i></b> (1968) very easily the most experimental sex education film I’ve ever seen, a collage that combines a variety of techniques with a mesmerizing score. This film takes intimacy into another dimension. Constance Beeson’s hypnotic and lyrical <b><i>Unfolding</i></b> (1969) was a visual verse about the emotional side of lovemaking, a song for the two souls becoming one.<b><i> Unfolding</i></b> is a more sensitive portrait from a woman’s perspective, about the closeness of sex.<b> <i>Desire Pie</i></b> (1976) by Lisa Crafts was a fun, tripped-out cartoon of the wacky and weird journey of sexual desires. &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It was also notable to see Alice Ann Parker’s<b><i> Near the Big Chakra</i></b> (1972) for the second time, having been lucky enough to meet her during her retrospective program at the 50th Ann Arbor Film Festival. It is such a radical educational film through pure observation. &nbsp; &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A special shout-out to the many generous venues and to the people behind the projectors and programming that make this city and the surrounding area an amazing place for those of us that love cinema. Thank you to those that tirelessly search through the archives, those that make new work from old, those that share and connect the community. &nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Craig Baldwin &amp; Other Cinema&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pacific Film Archive&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Artists’ Television Access&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">SF Cinematheque&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">The Exploratorium&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Shapeshifters Cinema&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Black Hole Cinematheque&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Oddball Cinema&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Canyon Cinema&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Yerba Buena Center for the Arts&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">SF Silent Film Festival&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Internet Archive&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Rick &amp; Megan Prelinger&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">California Film Institute&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Castro Theater&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Roxie Theater&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">Kala Art Institute&nbsp;</div><div style="text-align: left;">&amp; the many others that made my first six months here unrepeatable. </div></div></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-adrianne-finelli.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-5857918005069623114Sat, 31 Jan 2015 17:30:00 +00002015-01-31T19:44:20.917-08:00IOHTE 2014VogueIOHTE: Jonathan Kiefer<div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421876986958_54858" style="background-color: white; font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', 'Segoe UI', Helvetica, Arial, 'Lucida Grande', sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Contributor Jonathan Kiefer is a critic for the <a href="http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/ArticleArchives?author=2126614">SF Weekly</a> and <a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/authors/jonathan-kiefer/">Village Voice</a><span style="font-family: inherit;">; follow hi<span style="font-family: inherit;">m on twitter at <a href="https://twitter.com/kieferama">@K</a><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="https://twitter.com/kieferama">ieferama</a>.&nbsp;</span></span></span></i> </span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421876986958_54871" style="background-color: white;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6n4UtD7kYCc/VMwv4X55aDI/AAAAAAAAH40/dImRE3Gt1xs/s1600/hiroshimamonamour.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-6n4UtD7kYCc/VMwv4X55aDI/AAAAAAAAH40/dImRE3Gt1xs/s1600/hiroshimamonamour.bmp" height="303" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Screen shot from Criterion DVD</span></td></tr></tbody></table></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421876986958_54867" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Very briefly, I’d like to mention two moviegoing experiences here. The first was a mid-morning matinee, at the Vogue, of Alain Resnais’&nbsp;<b><i>Hiroshima mon amour</i></b>. My SF Weekly&nbsp;<a href="http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/hiroshima-mon-amour-movie-review/Content?oid=3226629" rel="nofollow" shape="rect" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% transparent; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: medium none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">review</a>&nbsp;didn't mention that somehow I'd never seen it until now -- which was ok because this time and place proved mysteriously just right after all. Of course this cherished memory also reminds me of my greatest regret of the year, perhaps of many years: missing out on a rare glimpse of Resnais’&nbsp;<b><i id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421876986958_54873">Je t’aime, Je t’aime</i></b>&nbsp;when it showed up all too fleetingly at the Castro.</span></span></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-jonathan-kiefer.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-1483140984825474467Sat, 31 Jan 2015 00:47:00 +00002015-01-30T16:47:00.056-08:00Artists' Television AccessCastroIOHTE 2014Noir CityRoxieStanfordYBCAIOHTE: David Robson<div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1421368444216_3153"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i></span></span><br /><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Contributor</i><i><span style="font-size: small;"> David Robson is "the editorial director of <a href="http://jaman.com/">Jaman.com</a>, a site that offers a smarter search for movies to watch online. Yet his moviegoing takes place almost entirely offline; he documents his viewing with increasing semi-regularity at the <a href="http://houseofsparrows.blogspot.com/">House of Sparrows</a>, and he cohabitates with those adorable simian cinephiles at <a href="http://monkeysgotomovies.tumblr.com/">Monkeys Go To Movies</a>."</span></i></span></div><div id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1421368444216_3160"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1421368444216_3161"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">My year in San Francisco rep began and ended with screams. In between it was an insanely lively and robust year for rep programming, with fine fine series of movies showing pretty much straight through the year. Even without the stuff I missed there're a lot of things to choose from, so in the interests of covering a breadth of films within the space limits imposed by Mr. Darr I'll limit myself to one movie per series/festival.</span></span></div></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1421435329708_2760"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ltJN2RA8pwQ/VMijWUeuPHI/AAAAAAAAH0U/OM1xXnKv6VA/s1600/teenagemother.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ltJN2RA8pwQ/VMijWUeuPHI/AAAAAAAAH0U/OM1xXnKv6VA/s1600/teenagemother.bmp" height="360" width="640" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Screen capture from Code Red DVD</span></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--The first movie I saw last year was<i><b> Teenage Mother</b></i>, a last-minute replacement for a film in an early January teensploitation series at the Roxie. The 16mm print was loaned to the Roxie by L.A.'s Cinefamily, who promised that it was an "audience destroyer." Sure enough, when the educational-film-level-acted story of a crusading sex ed teacher at an uptight, whitebread high school gave way to some clinical footage of a surgical birthing procedure, holy crap, NO ONE in the house was unaffected. I don't remember ever being quite so shattered by a year's first screening, and like the slashed eyeball in <i><b>Un Chien Andalou</b></i> it set a nice fever pitch for everything else to come in 2015.</span></span></div></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--I don't often discuss Noir City in these roundups, as most other sets of Two Eyes have it covered and I'm somewhat at odds with the yuk-yuk showmanship with which the series is presented. But 2014's Noir City offered an international focus on that most American genre, with a heavy emphasis on rare movies discovered by the Film Noir Foundation during its trips to Argentina. Some of these movies screened at Noir City in their first appearances ever in the US. Yet for all of the truly wonderful international gems unearthed for the series, my most indelible memory of Noir City 13 is <b><i>Macao</i></b> (internationally-set, but American made). There was incredible and palpable good will during this final Noir City screening, to the point that it felt like Jane Russell was actually in the house, performing "One for the Road" live for the Noir City faithful. Some of us in the Castro audience aren't as quick to applaud movies as others, but sometimes there's no other way to process what one's feeling.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HG6-FTP_fbY/VMAn48K8-HI/AAAAAAAAHuQ/XgpxNKVrKqA/s1600/wyneraseriousman.jpeg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HG6-FTP_fbY/VMAn48K8-HI/AAAAAAAAHuQ/XgpxNKVrKqA/s1600/wyneraseriousman.jpeg" height="180" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1421368444216_4092"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--A second time through the Coen Brothers' <b><i>No Country For Old Men </i></b>revealed nothing new: I still felt the movie was technically accomplished and smoothly suspenseful, but that Cormac McCarthy's nihilism was a disappointing, over-praised cop-out. The real revelation of the night turned out to be the B-picture: <b><i>A Serious Man</i></b>'s search for meaning in what's clearly an uncaring (and viciously playful) universe felt more honest and real than <i><b>No Country</b></i>, and its depiction of a specifically 1960s suburban weirdness and sensuality rang true, and made this feel like one of the Coens' most personal pictures. And George Wyner's narration of the story of the Goy's Teeth (accompanied by Jimi Hendrix) felt like a setpiece I'd been waiting most of my life to see, though damned if I know why.</span></span></div></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--Jonathan Demme's quirkily-charming--til-it-gets-real-honkin'-dark <b><i>Something Wild</i></b> made its first appearance in ages at the Castro. It's a strong piece of 80s nostalgia, and its soundtrack includes some of my favorite deep cuts of that decade (Jerry Harrison's "Man With A Gun" especially). But its story of a New York financier grappling with sudden freedom from responsibility, and yearning for a less-stringent, more carefree life resonated strongly here now, its nouveau riche characters poised to seize Manhattan from working class bohemians. And the SPECULATORS OUT! graffiti scrawled across the movie's downtown Manhattan spoke to a very real crisis happening just outside the Castro's doors.</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PqeCN7FZVoU/VMAn3qdwXbI/AAAAAAAAHuI/YDEoSWCiNfc/s1600/bbros.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PqeCN7FZVoU/VMAn3qdwXbI/AAAAAAAAHuI/YDEoSWCiNfc/s1600/bbros.jpg" height="180" width="320" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--I'd waited for YEARS to share <b><i>The Blues Brothers </i></b>with my good friend Aaron. A nice pre-show meal just up-street from the Castro, a good print of the movie, and the experience of a personal favorite that holds up three decades later (with new things revealed through the laughter and conversation of a good, smart friend seeing it for the first time) all made for a great night out. The movie itself remains a fond homage to the city of Chicago, the greatest iteration of the Belushi/Aykroyd chemistry, and possessed of fine musical performances by some of rhythm &amp; blues' finest performances (as well as a climactic chase that still must be seen to be believed).</span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1421368444216_3557"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--Waiting for The Stanford Theatre in Palo Alto to announce a new calendar can be a frustrating experience. I doubt I'm the only Bay Area cinephile to check the Stanford's website multiple times daily for any sign of forthcoming programming, only to be frustrated as <b><i>Gone With The Wind</i></b> is held over for another week. Then another week. But when they finally announced their late summer calendar in 2014, the floodgates just opened: no dark days, rarely screened movies jamming the calendar, with silents every Wednesday. The big attraction for this moviegoer was a damn-near-complete set of the Universal Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes series (programmed Thursdays and Fridays alongside Charlie Chan movies, a risky programming choice to which the Stanford worked diligently to provide context). It was difficult to make it to all of them, but I made damn sure to get to <i><b>The House of Fear</b></i>, a mystery as atmospheric as any of Universal's classic horror movies, boosted by unusually bold photography and art direction, and the fact that the normally-dim Watson figures the mystery out before we do. Good times!</span></span></div></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1421368444216_3248"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A55uoCW4nQk/VMwRUyJrLmI/AAAAAAAAH4k/hH4h4lhGr-w/s1600/theexile.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-A55uoCW4nQk/VMwRUyJrLmI/AAAAAAAAH4k/hH4h4lhGr-w/s1600/theexile.png" height="161" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Loving The Classics DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--Yerba Buena Center for the Arts film programmer/local-and-national-goddamn-treasure Joel Shepard threw the doors open wide to the YBCA screening room in 2014, inviting ten Bay Area cinephiles (including this one) to select and introduce a movie for screening during the varied and spectacular Invasion of the Cinemaniacs! series. Sad though it is to limit myself to one selection from this series, as every movie in the series (and be certain: I saw Every. Movie. In the series) offered up its own unique revelations, if pressed I'd probably pick Max Ophuls' <i><b>The Exile </b></i>as my favorite. An excellent pairing of Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. (attempting to make the kind of swashbuckler that made his father famous) and Max Ophuls (capturing the emotion and Shakespearean complexity of the story with style and grace), with Maria Montez and Nigel Bruce (the latter offering a Falstaffian gravitas absent from his Watson to Rathbone's Holmes) in fine support. Presenter David Wong schooled us on the mechanics of Ophuls' style, and their emotional payoffs, in one of the most mind-expanding film intros I've ever had the good fortune to witness.</span></span></div></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--The offbeat Canadian fantasy <i><b>Strange Behavior </b></i>had been one of those movie grails, often heard talked about yet never experienced. Finally caught up with it at the bottom end of a pre-Halloween double bill at the Castro. If in the end I wasn't swept away by a newly discovered classic, I was certainly captivated by its consistently odd choices, with its low budget necessitating not just an economical approach but what sometimes felt like an eccentric and deliberate rejection of cinematic realism. All this and a costumed dance party sequence at least as beguiling as the "Loco-Motion" scene in <b><i>INLAND EMPIRE</i></b>.</span></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gd2UPyCIbts/VMAnsbE7TFI/AAAAAAAAHuA/mN5DE3CJk1Q/s1600/godzillaonmonsterisland.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-gd2UPyCIbts/VMAnsbE7TFI/AAAAAAAAHuA/mN5DE3CJk1Q/s1600/godzillaonmonsterisland.jpg" height="320" width="229" /></a></span></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29276"><div id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29488"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;">--Strongly suspect that the 16mm print of <i><b>Godzilla on Monster Island </b></i>seen at Artists Television Access in November was the same print used for the KTVU broadcast that I taped and watched many, many, many times as a kid in the mid-1980s. Juvenile but charming kaiju insanity, with imagination outweighing a low budget and atrocious dubbing. A nicely rounded bunch of human heroes counterbalancing the Godzilla/Angilas team-up, too.</span></span></div></div><div id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29490"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><br clear="none" /></span></span></div><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29493"><div dir="ltr" id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1421435329708_7718"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span id="yiv2957325669yui_3_16_0_1_1420667213132_29492" style="font-size: small;">--The final rep screening in SF turned out to be a lovely little Christmas gift from the Castro Theatre. The Mario Bava centennial had been celebrated at a number of venues around the world, and I was a bit miffed that the year had gone by with none of the venues in San Francisco honoring the occasion. But the Castro, just under the wire (and maybe just coincidentally), screened Bava's final feature <i><b>Shock! </b></i>(known also as <b><i>Beyond the Door 2</i></b>), a minor Bava but one I'd never seen before. The screams from the audience during the movie's truly deranged final reel were enough to fill even the most Scroogelike cinephile with the joyous bounties of the holiday spirit.<br /></span></span></div></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-david-robson.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-2468252256742086388Fri, 30 Jan 2015 21:08:00 +00002015-01-30T13:09:17.959-08:00CastroHoleHeadIOHTE 2014Noir CityPFARoxieYBCAIOHTE: Michael Guillén<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span><i>Contributor&nbsp;</i></span><i>Michael Guillén is the schoolmaster of the essential blog <a href="http://theeveningclass.blogspot.com/">The Evening Class</a>, and contributes to many other online and print publications.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />Perhaps not surprisingly, whenever I return to San Francisco from Boise I am keen for repertory programming over contemporary theatrical releases.&nbsp; Between Boise's art house cinema The Flicks and the ubiquitous multiplexes, I can catch plenty of the latter; but, there is absolutely no repertory programming in the Gem State's capitol. None. So when I return to the Bay Area, I eschew most press screenings to focus on the Pacific Film Archive, the Roxie Theatre, the Castro Theatre and miscellaneous community-based film festivals to sate my thirst.&nbsp; Kudos to Brian Darr and <i>Hell on Frisco Bay</i> for celebrating repertory programming in San Francisco and environs.&nbsp; <i>Never</i>take it for granted.&nbsp; Take it from one who knows.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-isyj6HnJ2bY/VMlzW2_iboI/AAAAAAAAH10/8RhrzWseWbA/s1600/inthepalmofyourhand.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-isyj6HnJ2bY/VMlzW2_iboI/AAAAAAAAH10/8RhrzWseWbA/s1600/inthepalmofyourhand.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>Despite mournful complaints to the contrary, the advent of digital projection has afforded opportunity for increased repertory programming, particularly at venues like the Roxie and even an archive like PFA, but nothing starts the year out like the annual Noir City Film Festival and its dedicated emphasis on 35mm film.&nbsp; In its 12th edition, Noir City offered two rare Latin-American gems.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><i>In the Palm of Your Hand</i> </b>(<i><b>En la palma de tu mano</b></i>, 1951)—I first caught Roberto "the Ogre" Gavaldón's lush melodrama at the 2013 Morelia Film Festival during their sidebar tribute to Mexican actor Arturo de Córdova and was delighted that this restored print made an appearance in San Francisco.&nbsp; I brought several friends to this rare screening, which—as noted by Mexican scholar Eduardo de la Vega Alfaro—showcased not only the work of de Córdova and "the pure style" of Gavaldón, but marked an apex in Latin American film noir and "the immense capabilities" of cinematographer Alex Phillips.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><i>The Black Vampire</i></b>(<b><i>El Vampiro Negro</i></b>, 1953)—Connective tissue fascinates me, not only between mediums, but between films.&nbsp; Argentine director Román Viñoly Barreto's <b><i>The Black Vampire</i></b>, based on Fritz Lang's<b><i>M</i></b>, premiered in Argentina in October 1953—the month and year I was born—but didn't arrive on North American shores until January 2014, 61 years later.&nbsp; Talk about waiting a lifetime to see a film!&nbsp; No shot-by-shot remake, Barreto stages his own interpretation of this sordid tale of child molestation and murder with moody, lustrous cinematography by Aníbal González Paz.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hHhU34qVPWs/VMnmZBWxMEI/AAAAAAAAH2U/DbSlkaETnoU/s1600/tmen2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-hHhU34qVPWs/VMnmZBWxMEI/AAAAAAAAH2U/DbSlkaETnoU/s1600/tmen2.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Screen capture from Sony DVD</span></td></tr></tbody></table><i><b>T-Men</b></i> (1947)—Although I've seen Anthony Mann's <b><i>T-Men</i></b>several times—introduced to the film by noir historian Alan K. Rode as a representative of the fine work of actor Charles McGraw—I never tire of catching it.&nbsp; PFA's February 2014 series "Against the Law: The Crime Films of Anthony Mann" afforded the opportunity to watch an archival 35mm print introduced by Mann biographer Max Alvarez, who offered impressive insight into the film and its director.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><i>A Hatful of Rain</i></b>(1957)—Fred Zinnemann's <b><i>Hatful</i> </b>was just one of several entries in Donald Malcolm's curated Roxie retrospective profiling the career of Don Murray.&nbsp; Significant in emphasizing the perhaps over-earnest style of drama peculiar to the time, this study of addiction and its effect upon a young married couple addressed urban concerns with head-on honesty.&nbsp; Murray acted his ass off here and it was a pleasure to watch.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b>Boggy Depot</b>(1973)—Yerba Buena Center for the Arts offered a program of five shorts by San Francisco legend Curt McDowell, hosted by his sister Melinda and local film critic Johnny Ray Huston in conjunction with YBCA's seventh edition of Bay Area Now and in collaboration with Margaret Tedesco's [ 2nd floor projects ].&nbsp; The entire evening was an archival delight; but, <b><i>Boggy Depot</i></b> was a laugh-outloud send-up of the musical genre.&nbsp; Watching George Kuchar not-really-sing was almost more than I could handle.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w6y5Xl0d1UI/VMqpJdG9iBI/AAAAAAAAH4A/ka2mzcg-Co0/s1600/kissforakiller.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-w6y5Xl0d1UI/VMqpJdG9iBI/AAAAAAAAH4A/ka2mzcg-Co0/s1600/kissforakiller.png" height="217" width="400" /></a></div><i><b>A Kiss For A Killer</b></i>(<i><b>Une manche et la belle</b></i>, 1957)—Donald Malcolm returned to the Roxie with a curated selection of French noir rarieties ("The French Had A Name For It") that packed the house in unprecedented numbers, proving that there is life after 35mm, and that there's a definite market for titles unavailable elsewhere.&nbsp; There were several winners in this program—Bardot in <b><i>La vérité</i></b> (1960), Édouard Molinaro's docu-drama <b><i>Witness in the City</i></b> (<b><i>Un témoin dans la ville</i></b>, 1959), the two Robert Hossein vehicles <b><i>Highway Pickup</i></b>(<b><i>Chair de poule</i></b>, 1963) and <b><i>Blonde In A White Car</i></b> (<b><i>Toi Le Venin</i></b>, 1958), the coiled ferocity of Daniele Delorme in <b><i>Deadlier Than the Male</i></b> (<b><i>Voici Les Temps Des Assassins</i></b>, 1956) and the truest Christmas noir ever <b><i>Le Monte-Charge</i></b> (1962)—but the king of them all proved to be handsome Henri Vidal in the Gallic amalgam of <b><i>Sunset Boulevard</i> </b>and <b><i>The Postman Always Rings Twice</i></b>.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><i>Daughters of Darkness</i></b>(<b><i>Les lèvres rouges</i></b>, 1971)—Euro-horror came to the Castro Theatre with a double-bill of <b><i>Don't Look Now</i></b> (1973) and Harry Kümel's bisexual vampire cult favorite with Delphine Seyrig as the sensuous if perverse Countess Bathory.&nbsp; LGBT film studies have never been the same after this glorification of the "other" as nighttime's hungriest denizen.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F54nsjrwzNA/VMnryDEx7pI/AAAAAAAAH2k/UoFGCxG7SUc/s1600/curseofthecatpeople.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F54nsjrwzNA/VMnryDEx7pI/AAAAAAAAH2k/UoFGCxG7SUc/s1600/curseofthecatpeople.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Screen capture from Warner DVD</span></td></tr></tbody></table><i><b>The Curse of the Cat People</b></i> (1944)—Val Lewton, my favorite producer-auteur, took a title given to him by a poverty row studio and turned it into a classic tale of childhood psychology with the lovely Ann Carter as a melancholy child with an imaginary friend.&nbsp; I never dreamed I'd get to actually see a 35mm print of this film, and to see Ann's plaintive face in close-up on the Castro's giant screen made for perfect entertainment and a moment of thrilling cinephilia.&nbsp; Not really noir, of course, but a welcome entry to announce the upcoming program and poster for the 13th edition of Noir City.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><i><b>The Astrologer</b></i>(1975)—Nothing in the stars could have possibly predicted that 1975 would see two films entitled <i><b>The Astrologer</b></i>released on an unwary cinema public; nor that Craig Denney's film—not to be confused with the James Glickenhaus film—would reappear like a Tarot card from underneath a sleeve to pleasurably befuddle audiences at a one-off screening at Another Hole in the Head. &nbsp;Mike Keegan deserves a big shout-out for delivering this print to Holehead and treating SF's diehard genre fans to such a whacked-out tale of prognostication: the rise and fall of astrologer-to-the-stars Alexander (Denney), which—as Nicolas Winding Refn stated in his introduction to the film at this year's Fantastic Fest—is a movie "that pushes 'auteurism' to a whole other level." &nbsp;The film has been described as "wanton megalomania" and an "auto-biopic" and a plot synopsis would only prove more confusing than the film itself, which hacks its way through the editing room with a machete. &nbsp;Great fun to watch this faded-to-pink piece of delirium with fellow 35mm enthusiasts Jesse Hawthorne Ficks, Jason Wiener, David Wong and Maria Fidel.<o:p></o:p></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-michael-guillen.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-2269939492692390968Fri, 30 Jan 2015 04:47:00 +00002015-01-30T01:38:40.666-08:00CastroIOHTE 2014MVFFNoir CityPFASilent Film FestivalIOHTE: Lincoln Spector<span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span><i>Contributor Lincoln Spector is the proprietor of the <a href="http://bayflicks.net/">Bayflicks</a> website, where the <a href="http://bayflicks.net/2015/01/01/my-top-12-movie-going-experiences-of-2014/">original version</a> of this abridged list was first posted.</i></span><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pwmH3bwjGZ4/VMhwmSPW1jI/AAAAAAAAHx0/B2hJnNy4ipw/s1600/thekilling.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pwmH3bwjGZ4/VMhwmSPW1jI/AAAAAAAAHx0/B2hJnNy4ipw/s1600/thekilling.PNG" height="191" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Criterion DVD</td></tr></tbody></table>9:<b> <i><a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/09/07/early-and-excellent-kubrick-at-pfa/">Paths of Glory </a></i></b><a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/09/07/early-and-excellent-kubrick-at-pfa/">&amp; </a><b><i><a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/09/07/early-and-excellent-kubrick-at-pfa/">The Killing</a>&nbsp;</i></b><br /><a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/">Pacific Film Archive</a><br /><a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/eyeswide">Eyes Wide: The Films of StanleyKubrick</a><br />DCP<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br />To my mind,<b><i> Paths of Glory </i></b>stands out as Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece. This World War I tale of ruthless generals and the common foot soldiers shows the budding auteur at his best. The film he made just before it, <b><i>The Killing</i></b>, is a wonderful little noir; a classic heist thriller with a complex plan that goes horribly (and entertainingly) wrong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The DCPs, supplied by Park Circus, looked great. Whoever supervised the digital mastering respected the film look and the grain structure. They kept the original mono soundtracks, without trying to convert them to 5.1<br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br />8: <a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/01/26/crime-on-both-sides-of-the-border-saturday-at-noir-city/"><b><i>Too Late For Tears<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></i></b>&amp;<b><i> The Hitch-Hiker</i></b></a><br /><a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/">Castro</a><br /><a href="http://www.noircity.com/">Noir City</a><br />35mm <br />Lizabeth Scott plays that paragon of mid-century American virtue, the housewife, in <b><i>Too Late for Tears</i></b>, but she plays her as a femme fatal-. Willing to do anything to hold onto an illegal fortune, she proves herself smarter and meaner than everyone else as she sinks into depravity and murder. <b><i>The Hitch-Hiker</i></b> is a quick, efficient thriller that’s simple, suspenseful, and based on a true story. Two men on a fishing vacation pick up a hitchhiker, who turns out to be a psychotic killer wanted by the police.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Both films were shown in recently restored 35mm prints. Eddie Muller of the <a href="http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/home.html">Film Noir Foundation</a>explained the problems in restoring <b><i>Too Late for Tears</i></b>, which admittedly suffered from uneven image quality. Shy of an expensive digital restoration, it’s not likely to look any better.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mLdC2xTbmEk/VMhwhHJHnUI/AAAAAAAAHxs/iF6t9xKateM/s1600/ducksoup.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-mLdC2xTbmEk/VMhwhHJHnUI/AAAAAAAAHxs/iF6t9xKateM/s1600/ducksoup.bmp" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Universal DVD</td></tr></tbody></table>7: <b><i><a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/01/20/duck-soup-revisited/">Duck Soup</a></i></b><br /><a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/">Pacific Film Archive</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/american_comedy">Funny Ha-Ha: American Comedy, 1930–1959</a><br />35mm<br />The Marx Brothers at their purest and most perfect. What makes it so pure and perfect? First, it’s comedy stripped to the bone; there’s scarcely a minute without at least one good laugh. Second, the Brothers were always at their best when up against the stuffy, respectable protectors of the status quo, and the richest strain of that gold can be found in the halls of government. As the absolute ruler of Freedonia, Groucho Marx encourages graft, refuses to take anything seriously, and starts a war on a whim.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen <b><i>Duck Soup</i></b>, but the day before this screening, it had been at least 30 years since I’d seen it theatrically. Watching this great comedy in a theater, with an enthusiastic audience, made it come back to life again. Over the years, I’d forgotten that even the name Rufus T. Firefly gets a laugh.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />6: <b><i><a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/10/09/mvff-the-good-the-bad-the-ugly-and-the-lark/">The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly</a>&nbsp;</i></b><br /><a href="http://www.larktheater.net/">Lark</a><br /><a href="http://www.mvff.com/">Mill Valley FilmFestival</a><br />4K DCP<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br />Here’s an epic, sardonic, semi-comic western quest motivated purely by greed. Three violent and deadly criminals set out to recover $200,000 in stolen gold. None of them knows exactly where the loot is hidden, but individually each has a piece of the puzzle. They constantly change allegiances, sometimes collaborating with and then double-crossing each other. Meanwhile, the Civil War rages all around them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>MGM recently gave this classic a new, 4K restoration, which included the original mono soundtrack. it was a great presentation, showing the deep colors and heavy grain expected in a Techniscope production of the 1960s. Unless there’s an archival dye-transfer print from the original release somewhere, this is as good as the picture can get. A great audience as well, and my first visit to the Lark.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-toAMd-tTfVs/VMnmJveL2JI/AAAAAAAAH2M/_PA_V_2tBf0/s1600/bestyearsofourlives.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-toAMd-tTfVs/VMnmJveL2JI/AAAAAAAAH2M/_PA_V_2tBf0/s1600/bestyearsofourlives.tiff" height="253" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Music Box DVD of The Story of Film</td></tr></tbody></table>5: <i><b><a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/11/12/the-best-years-of-our-lives-at-the-castro">The Best Years of Our Lives</a>&nbsp;</b></i><br /><a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/">Castro</a><br />DCP<br />There’s no better movie for Veteran’s Day. A huge commercial hit and the Best Picture Oscar winner for 1946, it’s now all but forgotten. That’s too bad, because<b><i> Best Years</i></b> is not only an excellent film, it also deals with an issue that’s unfortunately still with us–integrating war veterans back into civilian life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This was my first chance seeing <b><i>Best Years</i></b>theatrically, and it was worth it. Before the film started, the Castro entertained us with a slideshow of coming attractions and music appropriate to the immediate postwar period. Then came the organ concert, followed by<b><i> The Best Years of Our Lives</i></b>. The digital transfer was mostly excellent, although a few scenes had clearly come from low-quality sources.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">4: <a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/09/22/valentino-keaton-caligari-laurel-and-hardy-my-report-on-silent-autumn/">Another Fine Mess: Silent Laurel and Hardy Shorts</a><br /><a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/">Castro</a><br /><a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a>‘s Silent Autumn<br />35mm, with live music<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br />Laurel and Hardy’s onscreen personas were probably the dumbest reoccurring characters in the history of cinema. Stan appears incapable of having a thought or remembering an instruction. But Stan at least knows he’s dumb; Oli considers himself smart. Their comedy is extremely violent, but the slow, methodical, and absurd nature of that violence makes it enduring. The festival screened three of their two-reel silents–<b><i>Should Married Men Go Home?</i></b>, <i><b>Two Tars</b></i>, and <b><i>Big Business</i></b>. All three were extremely vengeful and destructive–and extremely funny.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Donald Sosin accompanied these shorts on a grand piano. All three films opened with the MGM lion, and Sosin managed to recreate the roar musically. His lively music also<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>helped keep the laughs coming. The Festival screened archival prints from the Library of Congress and the UCLA Film Archive. Aside from some bad titles in <b><i>Should Married Men Go Home?</i></b>, they looked excellent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G7ieoz4rcQI/VMhsUYzwugI/AAAAAAAAHxg/siKyUsCO7HI/s1600/diehard.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G7ieoz4rcQI/VMhsUYzwugI/AAAAAAAAHxg/siKyUsCO7HI/s1600/diehard.bmp" height="171" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from 20th Centtury Fox DVD</td></tr></tbody></table>3: <a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/12/22/die-hard-even-better-on-the-big-screen/"><b><i>Die Hard</i></b></a><br /><a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/">Castro</a><br />DCP<br />What makes a great action movie? A strong plot, a likeable and sympathetic hero, a fun but scary villain, great fights, and the willingness to spend nearly half an hour on character development before the first violent act. NYC policeman John McClane (Bruce Willis) arrives in LA hoping to reconcile with his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia). She’s a rising executive; he’s a working-class cop. Then a dozen well-armed bad guys take over the building, kill a few people, then hold everyone hostage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Die Hard was originally released in 70mm, but up until a couple of weeks ago, I had only seen it on Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray. But between the big screen, the powerful sound system, the excellent DCP transfer, and the enthusiastic audience, it was a whole new experience. I used to give <i><b>Die Hard</b></i> an A. Now I give it an A+.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />2: <b><i><a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/07/17/rediscovering-the-big-lebowski/">The Big Lebowski</a></i></b><br /><a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/">Pacific Film Archive</a><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp;&nbsp;</span><br /><a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/rudeawakening">Rude Awakening: American Comedy, 1990–2010</a><br />DCP<br />As with <b><i>Die Hard</i></b>, I had never seen the Coen Brothers’ cult hit theatrically before 2014. But unlike <i><b>Die Hard</b></i>, I had never really appreciated it before. This comedy really needed the theatrical experience to come alive. Imagine a Raymond Chandler story where Philip Marlowe has been replaced with a happily unemployed, perpetually stoned, thoroughly inept slacker who calls himself "the Dude" (Jeff Bridges). Behind the laughs, you can find a thin, barely grasped sense of Zen–as if you could throw yourself to the universe and everything will come out okay…unless it doesn’t.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The well-packed audience made the film special, allowing me to discover that a film I thought was pretty good was actually pretty great. But the presentation had a very big flaw: an over-processed DCP. It looked like video, with film grain removed and everything smoothed over. Considering the quality of this transfer, I would rather have seen this movie in 35mm.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-trSYvefI3rg/VMnhdmGIlUI/AAAAAAAAH2E/S7sO9Qil3As/s1600/goldrush.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-trSYvefI3rg/VMnhdmGIlUI/AAAAAAAAH2E/S7sO9Qil3As/s1600/goldrush.png" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Warner DVD.</td></tr></tbody></table>1: <i><b><a href="http://bayflicks.net/2014/01/12/chaplin-at-the-castro-my-report-on-a-wonderful-day/">The Gold Rush</a></b></i><br /><a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/">Castro</a><br /><a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a>‘s <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/special-events/the-little-tramp-at-100">The Little Tramp at 100</a><br />DCP, with live music<br />In this epic comic adventure, Chaplin’s tramp travels through the frozen Yukon of the Alaskan gold rush, gets marooned in a cabin with two much larger men, nearly starves to death, nearly gets eaten, and falls in love with a dancehall girl who scarcely knows he’s alive. This seemingly serious story contains some of Chaplin’s funniest set pieces, including the Thanksgiving dinner of boiled shoe, the dance of the rolls, and my favorite–the fight over a rifle that always points at Chaplin. It’s not my favorite Chaplin feature–that would be <b><i>City Lights</i></b>, but it’s a close second.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This was unquestionably the best screening of <b><i>The Gold Rush</i></b> I’ve ever experienced. The digital image quality was uneven, but most of it looked very good, and none of it looked dreadful. Timothy Brock conducted the San Francisco Chamber Orchestra in his adaptation of Chaplin’s score, adding some wonderful musically-created effects. And the large, enthusiastic audience made it even better.</div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-lincoln-specter.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-7605898473294224296Thu, 29 Jan 2015 18:33:00 +00002015-01-29T10:38:17.072-08:00IOHTE 2014MizoguchiPFAIOHTE: Terri Saul<div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: inherit;">Contributor Terri Saul is a <a href="http://www.terrisaul.com/about.html">visual artist</a> and writer; she sometimes comments on new films on&nbsp;<a href="http://letterboxd.com/sisterrye/films/reviews/by/shortest/">Letterboxd</a>.</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><i style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></i></div><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hnNr4FTWoMo/VMikGXZ7JvI/AAAAAAAAH0c/BY0Np3dFraE/s1600/touchofsin.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-hnNr4FTWoMo/VMikGXZ7JvI/AAAAAAAAH0c/BY0Np3dFraE/s1600/touchofsin.bmp" height="265" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Kino Lorber DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;">1. &nbsp; <b><i>A Touch of Sin</i></b> (China, 2013), Jia Zhangke, Saturday, March 22nd, 2014, 8:15pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, screened as part of the <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">“</span>A Theater Near You<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">” </span>series. <o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><b><i>A Touch of Sin</i></b> is a well-choreographed chain of reenacted current events exposing, through martial dramatization, the everyday violence of life and livelih<o:p></o:p>ood in pockets of contemporary China. </div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b><i></i></b></span><!--[endif]--><b><i>The Adversary </i></b>(India, 1970), Satyajit Ray, Sunday, March 30th, 2014, 5:15pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, was one of the films in the <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">“</span>The Brilliance of Satyajit Ray<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">” </span>set.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">More political than the other Rays I<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>ve seen,<b><i> the Adversary</i></b> reveals the small-scale warfare of everyday joblessness and revolutionary politics in the chaos of late 60s Calcutta. Literal heat inflames heated brawls and renders nightmarish hallucinations, via pitta in the chitta.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S3BlMTgUZAg/VMn6tk-dgPI/AAAAAAAAH3Y/kHyaFJUqMCo/s1600/photographicmemory.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-S3BlMTgUZAg/VMn6tk-dgPI/AAAAAAAAH3Y/kHyaFJUqMCo/s1600/photographicmemory.bmp" height="225" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from First Run Features DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><b><i>Photographic Memory </i></b>(US, 2011), Ross McElwee, Tuesday, April 1st, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, was part of the <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">“</span>Ross McElwee and the Cambridge Turn<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">” </span>series.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">This documentary touches, too, on the 60s and exists in the no man<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s land between memorabilia, conversations, uniquely narrated musings, research, interviews, and observation. <b><i>Photographic Memory</i></b> travels between modern-day Cambridge and Brittany, France, then and now. A game of catch-me-if-you-can intergenerational grasping and sporting youthful play develops bit-by-bit between a father and his son. Not finding his son, he looks for himself; the son, avoiding his father in order to find himself, searches for entries and exits to and from the peering lens of his father<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s world. The son and father both employ ever-more daring techniques to capture the kind of attention they both want, maybe not so much from each other, but perhaps from those outside familial bounds. McElwee has an unforgettable narrative voice-over style I find simultaneously charming and invasive.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b><i></i></b></span><!--[endif]--><b><i>The Grapes of Wrath </i></b>(US 1940), John Ford, Wednesday, June 18th, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA. This show was a celebration of the restored 75th anniversary print with and introduction by Susan Shillinglaw in conversation with Gary Brechin and Harvey Smith.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">New Deal preservation, related projects, and Stenibeck Studies enhanced the audience<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s experience. I, for one, had never seen<b><i> The Grapes of Wrath </i></b>on a big screen. For a poverty-conscious Californian with Okie roots, things got pretty v<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">é</span>rit<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">é</span>. Look under the freeway overpass near the Albany Bulb, here in the Bay Area, for the next chapter.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jGZkvdfjrkI/VMn0qqJF7LI/AAAAAAAAH3A/Bher6XA_Qu0/s1600/nighttrain.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jGZkvdfjrkI/VMn0qqJF7LI/AAAAAAAAH3A/Bher6XA_Qu0/s1600/nighttrain.png" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Polart DVD</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->5.<b><i><span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]-->Night Train</i></b> (Poland 1959), Jerzy Kawalerowicz, Sunday, July 6th, 2014, 5pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA, was part of <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">“</span>Martin Scorsese Presents Masterpieces of Polish Cinema,<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">” </span>a digitally restored print.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">Opening in the Polish city of <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">Łó</span>d<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">ź</span>, this cool train mystery unspools like a 35mm film print, each secondary compartment squeezed in its own intangible rectangle rushing past until the film reel jumps its platter and hurls itself into a field with the force of a heavy truckload of film stock come unbalanced in the projection booth.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->6.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><b><i>A Geisha </i></b>(Japan 1953), Kenji Mizoguchi, Friday, July 25th, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA. This, and the other Mizoguchis on my list, were presented as part of <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">“</span>Kenji Mizoguchi: A Cinema of Totality."<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">Are there some seeds of feminism in Mizoguchi<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s version of a postwar floating world? Young women<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s rights and their obstructions begin to emerge in this film about the bonds of apprenticeship, money lending, servitude, trickery, and the haunted beauty of Kyoto in the 50s. Some would call it melodrama, but the film<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s theatricality and overtly political subject matter is quietly observed by Mizoguchi in his standoffish style.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->7.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><b><i>Office Space</i></b> (US, 1999), Mike Judge, Friday, July 25th, 2014, 8:45pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA. Part of the series <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">“</span><a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/rudeawakening"><span class="Hyperlink0">Rude Awakening: American Comedy, 1990</span><span class="Hyperlink0"><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">–</span>2010</span></a><span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">”</span><o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">Where it all started and where many of us ended up. <o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PUmw2P36PSo/VMikgxrPSjI/AAAAAAAAH0k/NYu26ST7poY/s1600/crucfiedlovers.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-PUmw2P36PSo/VMikgxrPSjI/AAAAAAAAH0k/NYu26ST7poY/s1600/crucfiedlovers.bmp" height="300" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Masters of Cinema DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->8.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><b><i>Crucified Lovers: A Story from Chikamatsu</i></b>(Japan, 1954), Wednesday, July 30th, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">A whirlwind, sometimes slapstick, mistaken-identity tale, like a lover<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s version of the <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">“</span>who<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s on first<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">”</span> routine, but this time it<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">“</span>who<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s crucified first?<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">”</span>Mizoguchi<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s adaptation is based on a 17th-century story that has come a long way from its puppet-play roots. It now has a 50<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s era film noir vibe but it maintains the feeling of a morally complicated folktale on parade in the stage of the streets. The spoiler of a title doesn<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>t ruin the story<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s arc.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->9.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b><i>&nbsp; </i></b></span><!--[endif]--><b><i>The Taira Clan Saga </i></b>(Japan 1955), Kenji Mizoguchi, Thursday, August 14th, 2014, 7pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">A dance of underfunded samurai and selfish monastics, a Mizoguchi in color<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">—</span>what could be more perfect? This film is like story candy. It leaves me not quite satiated, and with a noisy, guilt-inducing wrapper in my pocket that, for some reason, I keep as a memento of a night when I ate dessert first.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in; mso-list: l1 level1 lfo2; tab-stops: list .25in; text-indent: -.25in;"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LfR2zYdtV2o/VMn2bToH-pI/AAAAAAAAH3M/wzOizyiY0t0/s1600/eastofeden.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LfR2zYdtV2o/VMn2bToH-pI/AAAAAAAAH3M/wzOizyiY0t0/s1600/eastofeden.png" height="250" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Warner DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: left;"><!--[if !supportLists]-->10.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><b><i>East of Eden</i></b>, Elia Kazan (US, 1955), Friday, September 5th, 2014, 8:50pm, at the Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, CA. A part of <span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">“</span>James Dean, Restored Classics from Warner Bros.<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif;">”</span><o:p></o:p></div></div><div class="Body"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;">Here comes James Dean, not the way he looked on the family TV, but digitally restored, in CinemaScope, and larger than life. <b><i>East of Eden</i></b> was a gritty follow-up to the earlier lesson in Steinbeck Studies after the<b><i> Grapes of Wrath </i></b>screening and discussion of Weedpatch Camp in Bakersfield, last June.&nbsp;<b><i>East of Eden</i></b> there<span style="font-family: &quot;Arial Unicode MS&quot;,sans-serif; mso-ascii-font-family: Helvetica;">’</span>s more dirt and less dust, this time in Salinas.<o:p></o:p></div></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="Body" style="margin-left: .25in;"><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-terri-saul.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-333339840983034265Wed, 28 Jan 2015 22:29:00 +00002015-01-29T10:44:55.478-08:00CastroI Wake Up DreamingIOHTE 2014Noir CityPFAStanfordYBCAIOHTE: Ben Armington<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found&nbsp;<a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><br /></i></span><i>Contributor&nbsp;</i><i>Ben Armington self-describes as "</i><i>Box Cubed Box Office guy for many Bay Area Film Festivals; watcher of movies"</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-YT5Bq-ExnX0/VMAswYevp3I/AAAAAAAAHuw/9B4PbKWeLnY/s1600/Shanghai%2BGesture%2B-%2BCrazy%2Beyes.jpg" height="217" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">1.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><i><b>The Shanghai Gesture</b></i> (Castro, Noir City)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A humid colonial melodrama with a very noir heart, oozing erotic obsession and creeping hysteria from it’s every plothole.&nbsp; My favorite from a fun line up of international films at Eddie Mueller’s great Noir City film festival.&nbsp; Legend has it that sultan of cinematic sultriness Josef Von Sternberg directed most of this hallucination while lying on his back on a cot (he was sick, the story goes).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">2.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b></b></span><!--[endif]--><i><b>Je t’aime, Je t’aime</b></i> (Castro)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;Alain Resnais’ death-haunted sci-fi head trip up, down, around memory lane is strongly reminiscent of his sometime collaborator Chris Marker’s masterpiece <i><b>La Jetee</b></i>, but has a heartbreaking sense of despondency all it’s own embedded in it’s flawless montage.&nbsp; Featuring the weirdest time machine ever to grace the big screen.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xut5mPagqg0/VMAtrfgdjAI/AAAAAAAAHvA/LXGGwp6lqwU/s1600/goodbye%2Bsou%2C%2Bgoodbye%2B-%2Blet%2Bthe%2Bgood%2Btimes%2Broll.jpg" height="218" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="400" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">3.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b></b></span><!--[endif]--><i><b>Goodbye South, Goodbye</b></i> (PFA, HHH retro)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">All seven films I saw at the travelling retrospective of director Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s work that landed at the PFA towards the end of the year were worthy, even revelatory, experiences, but <i><b>Goodbye South, Goodbye</b></i> was the one I plugged into the most so it’s getting the shout here.&nbsp; Something about the hard-luck inertia the characters are mulishly wading through combined with images of fleeting, exhilarating motion rang very true, very affecting.&nbsp; Here’s hoping that Hou finishes his new film soon!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">4.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><i><b>The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond</b> </i>(Roxie, I Wake Up Dreaming)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A nifty, fleet-footed gangster saga with a pretty grim view of what we’ll call the success ethic.&nbsp; Directed by Budd Boetticher with the same lean and mean precision that can be found in his celebrated Ranown cycle of westerns and co-starring Warren Oates as the sickly brother.<o:p></o:p></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JG5xLA--IoI/VMAtmHClXUI/AAAAAAAAHu4/rWFxeMfyxmE/s1600/Don't%2BLook%2BNow%2B-%2BThe%2BScream.jpg" height="169" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">5.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><b style="font-style: italic;">Don’t Look Now</b><i>/</i><b style="font-style: italic;">Daughters of Darkness</b> (Castro)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Diabolical, super-stylish double feature of films often classified as horror but which strike me more as gothics, in the sense that they are about past traumas haunting the present and repressed sexual tensions bubbling up screaming to the surface more than the wheezy hack and slash dynamics often associated with the horror genre... anyways, I love them both and was thrilled to see them on the big screen at the Castro.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">6.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<b></b></span><!--[endif]--><i><b>Ora, Plata, Mata</b></i>(YBCA, Filipino Film Festival)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A rip-roaring historical epic in the<b> </b><i><b>Gone With the Wind</b> </i>mode following two upper-middle class families’ travails through the strife of the Second World War in the Philippines.&nbsp; I went to this one mainly because friends were going only to be helplessly sucked into it’s entertaining embrace.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mPK87IcqUM8/VMAtuFvoXqI/AAAAAAAAHvI/v48slRSd7yg/s1600/popeye%2B-%2Bseeing%2Bred.jpg" height="272" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="640" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-mPK87IcqUM8/VMAtuFvoXqI/AAAAAAAAHvI/v48slRSd7yg/s1600/popeye%2B-%2Bseeing%2Bred.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">7.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><i><b>Popeye</b></i>(Castro, M4M)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I wouldn’t want to make a case for the subversiveness of this oft unfunny major studio release from noodly autuer Robert Altman, but I do find it’s ornery bizarreness captivating, and enjoy Altman’s anarchic refusal to focus on&nbsp; plot points in favor of letting the rhubarbing cast squawk at each other.&nbsp; It was very poignant to watch Robin Williams mumble his way through the lead role with characteristic good nature and grace.&nbsp; This was his film debut.&nbsp; With songs by Harry Nilsson. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">8.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;<b>&nbsp; </b></span><!--[endif]--><i><b>Side Street/Une Femme Marie</b></i> (PFA)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A seemingly random double feature of less-heralded films by filmmakers I compulsively return to (Anthony Mann and Jean-Luc Godard) that seemed to speak to each other in subliminal and nigh subterranean ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-NksU_yBy8bs/VMAtwEo0m5I/AAAAAAAAHvQ/S_NqbE7n4p4/s1600/the%2Blong%2Briders%2B-%2Btreehugger.jpg" height="159" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Image provided by contributor</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">9.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><i><b>The Long Riders</b></i>(Castro)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I’m a big fan of westerns and director Walter Hill, so this one pretty much had me from the opening credits.&nbsp; A re-telling of the familiar James/Younger gang myth colored in with the stunt casting of real-life brothers as brothers in the narrative (the brothers Keach,&nbsp; Carradine, Quaid and Guest all saddle up), the film really comes alive in it’s interstitial dialogue with other westerns (most plainly <i><b>The Wild Bunch</b></i>) and in Hill’s dynamic staging of the breathtaking and bloody action scenes.&nbsp; <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle" style="margin-left: .5in; mso-add-space: auto; mso-list: l0 level1 lfo1; text-indent: -17.95pt;"><!--[if !supportLists]--><span style="font-family: inherit;">10.<span style="font-size: 7pt; font-stretch: normal;">&nbsp; </span><!--[endif]--><b style="font-style: italic;">The Violent Men</b><i>/</i><b style="font-style: italic;">40 Guns</b> (Stanford)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: inherit;">More westerns!&nbsp; The fun of this double bill was how, even though both films are in the same genre and thus speak the same language, they were completely different in execution.&nbsp; Rudolph Mate’s <i><b>The</b> <b>Violent Men</b></i> is like a smooth ride in a stately carriage, comfortable and serene, whereas Sam Fuller’s <i><b>40 Guns</b></i> is like jumping on a careening roller coaster and realizing that the brake man is passed out drunk.&nbsp; You arrive at the same place, basically, with both films, but the difference in delivery is illuminating.&nbsp; Also, it was a high point in my cinematic year watching Barbara Stanwyck spit out Fuller’s rapid fire dialogue.</span></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-ben-armington.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-7406393936533375566Wed, 28 Jan 2015 08:38:00 +00002015-01-28T00:38:56.254-08:00IOHTE 2014RoxieSilent Film FestivalIOHTE: Margarita Landazuri<span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i></span></span><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i><br /></i></span></span><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>Contributor Margarita Landazur<span style="font-family: inherit;">i wr</span>ites for <a href="http://www.tcm.com/search/?text=landazuri&amp;type=allSite">Turner Classic Movies</a>, <a href="http://www.documentary.org/feature/broken-men-outsiders-and-eccentrics-populate-docs-sf-fest">International Documentary</a>, and other outlets.</i><b><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></b></span></span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_a29-_4sXDE/VMiPdPSjTlI/AAAAAAAAHz0/_B2cjlgSJ9c/s1600/loveismyprofession3.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_a29-_4sXDE/VMiPdPSjTlI/AAAAAAAAHz0/_B2cjlgSJ9c/s1600/loveismyprofession3.bmp" height="207" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">screen capture from Le Video rental DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv9390416191" id="yiv9390416191yui_3_16_0_6_1421096941469_13" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I loved the Roxie's <a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/french-noir/">French Noir festival</a>, and unfortunately was not able to see as many films as I would have liked, because most of the programs sold out quickly. I did make it to the streeetwalkers double bill of <b><i>Dede d'Anvers</i></b> and <i><b>Love is My Profession</b></i>, and enjoyed the contrast between Simone Signoret's womanly <i>poule</i>, and Brigitte Bardot's sex kitten. After seeing Signoret, world-weary and wounded in the foggy waterfront shadows in the former, Bardot seemed boringly pouty and petulant in the latter. However, the always-watchable Jean Gabin as the middle-aged lawyer ensnared by Bardot made that film worthwhile.</span></span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv9390416191" id="yiv9390416191yui_3_16_0_6_1421096941469_13" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">As usual, the San Francisco Silent Film Festival's four-day summer program offered an embarrassment of riches. My favorite was also the most surprising: Yasujiro Ozu's <i><b><a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2014-festival/dragnet-girl">Dragnet Girl</a></b></i>, a 1933 gangster film with deliriously kinetic camera moves from the master of static camera and quiet family dramas and comedies. Another discovery for me was French comedian/auteur Max Linder, whom I'd heard of but never seen. <i><b><a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2014-festival/seven-years-bad-luck">Seven Years of Bad Luck</a></b></i> showed why Linder's genius for physical comedy influenced comics as diverse as Chaplin (who called himself Linder's "disciple") to possibly Lucille Ball -- Ball's "I Love Lucy" mirror routine with Harpo Marx is uncannily similar to Linder's in the film.</span></span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv9390416191" id="yiv9390416191yui_3_16_0_6_1421096941469_13" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">At the Silent Film Festival's one-day Autumn event, the standout for me was the restored <b><i>Cabinet of Dr. Caligari</i></b>, with Donald Sosin's superb synthesizer accompaniment. The clarity and the detail of the images, and the expressionist-style intertitles are impressive. As <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive-by-year/2014-silent-autumn/the-cabinet-of-dr-caligari">Michael Atkinson</a> wrote in his program notes, it's almost like seeing a brand-new fil<span style="font-family: inherit;">m.&nbsp;&nbsp;</span></span></span></span></span><br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BWOs-9LLRUA/VMieYgpYacI/AAAAAAAAH0E/cjsb7zWpPSE/s1600/busstop.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-BWOs-9LLRUA/VMieYgpYacI/AAAAAAAAH0E/cjsb7zWpPSE/s1600/busstop.png" height="250" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">screen capture from fox DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="yiv9390416191" id="yiv9390416191yui_3_16_0_6_1421096941469_13" style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">I really enjoyed the Don Murray retrospective at the the <a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/special-weekend-don-murray/">Roxie</a> last summer. The two double bills I saw demonstrated the range of this vastly underrated and overlooked actor. He played a drug-addicted veteran in <i><b>A Hatful of Rain</b></i>, a restless, married office worker in <b><i>The Bachelor Party</i></b>, a tortured gay senator and blackmail victim in <i><b>Advi<span style="font-family: inherit;">s</span>e and Consent</b></i>, and a boisterous cowboy opposite Marilyn Monroe in <i><b>Bus Stop</b></i>. Now in his 80s, Murray attended the screenings and spoke thoughtfully and insightfully about his career.</span></span></span></span></span>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-margarita-landazuri.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-3777533250176592746Wed, 28 Jan 2015 01:52:00 +00002015-01-27T23:04:45.390-08:00Black HoleCastroExploratoriumHoleHeadI Wake Up DreamingIOHTE 2014PFARoxieStanfordYBCAIOHTE: Jesse Hawthorne Ficks<i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i><br /><br /><i>Contributor Jesse Hawthorne Ficks is the Film History Coordinator at the <a href="http://www2.academyart.edu/degrees/graduate-liberal-arts-faculty.html">Academy of Art University </a>and curates/hosts the <a href="http://www.midnitesformaniacs.com/">MiDNiTES FOR MANiACS</a> series at the Castro Movie Theatre, which showcases underrated, overlooked and dismissed films in a neo-sincere manner.</i><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-K-lVu3coxeg/VMhzCCyIKUI/AAAAAAAAHyA/eIvnkUtTwVY/s1600/theastrologer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-K-lVu3coxeg/VMhzCCyIKUI/AAAAAAAAHyA/eIvnkUtTwVY/s1600/theastrologer.jpg" height="191" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>10.<b id="yui_3_16_0_1_1422426554270_6331">&nbsp;<i>The Astrologer</i></b> (Craig Denney, 1975) The only 35mm print in existence @ The New People Cinema part of "Another Hole in the Head" Film Festival. If only audiences would have allowed the film to work its magic before they started making fun of it. There really is something quite daring and motivated by Denney's descent here. <br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Sk0ExF4hV5A/VMhzYvtPJDI/AAAAAAAAHyI/-VWfjVFUX0k/s1600/myfairlady.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Sk0ExF4hV5A/VMhzYvtPJDI/AAAAAAAAHyI/-VWfjVFUX0k/s1600/myfairlady.jpg" height="188" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>9.<b><i>My Fair Lady</i></b> (George Cukor, 1964)&nbsp;<br /> One of the most beautiful 171 minutes (11 reels) projected from an anamorphic 2.35:1 IB Technicolor 35mm print ever experienced @ The Castro Theatre<br /><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z--sDvQ1Ru4/VMh0ftxRs0I/AAAAAAAAHyY/oUWSd2Z82xE/s1600/cityofsadness.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Z--sDvQ1Ru4/VMh0ftxRs0I/AAAAAAAAHyY/oUWSd2Z82xE/s1600/cityofsadness.jpg" height="223" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>8.&nbsp;<i style="font-weight: bold;">A City of Sadness</i>&nbsp;(Hou Hsiao-hsien, 1989) Perhaps the last time this 35mm will screen in the US, @ Pacific Film Archive <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p608ZxBtSF0/VMh0v9Y1nAI/AAAAAAAAHy0/UmvjPGKS_DI/s1600/peoplespark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-p608ZxBtSF0/VMh0v9Y1nAI/AAAAAAAAHy0/UmvjPGKS_DI/s1600/peoplespark.jpg" height="179" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>7. <b><i>People's Park</i></b> (Libbie Dina Cohn, J.P. Sniadecki, 2012) Part of Harvard's ongoing experimental documentary film program "Sensory Ethnography Lab" @ The Black Hole (in Oakland) <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aBCKHqBHnfo/VMh0tD9qNWI/AAAAAAAAHyk/nbV2PZwpLZo/s1600/jodiemack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-aBCKHqBHnfo/VMh0tD9qNWI/AAAAAAAAHyk/nbV2PZwpLZo/s1600/jodiemack.jpg" height="290" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>6. "Off the Screen: Let Your Light Shine with Jodie Mack" IN PERSON! Watching five beautiful 16mm prints of Mack's masterful collages was utterly inspiring including:&nbsp;<i style="font-weight: bold;">New Fancy Foils&nbsp;</i>(2013),&nbsp;<b><i>Undertone Overture</i></b>&nbsp;(2013),&nbsp;<b><i>Dusty Stacks of Mom: The Poster Project</i></b>&nbsp;(2013),&nbsp;<b><i>Glistening Thrills</i></b>&nbsp;(2013),&nbsp;<b><i>Let Your Light Shine</i></b>&nbsp;(2013) @ The Exploratorium in Pier 15. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uoN7zltlhW0/VMh0zoYqhTI/AAAAAAAAHzE/DYT5QJAQf10/s1600/theviolentmen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-uoN7zltlhW0/VMh0zoYqhTI/AAAAAAAAHzE/DYT5QJAQf10/s1600/theviolentmen.jpg" height="184" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>5.<b><i> The Violent Men</i></b> (Rudolph Maté, 1955) and <i><b>Forty Guns</b></i> (Samuel Fuller, 1957) Made on either side of John Ford's 1956 masterpiece <b><i>The Searchers</b></i>, these two melodrama westerns not only showcased one of my favorite actresses Barbara Stanwyck, the films themselves are now firmly two of my favorite westerns of all time. Screened @ The Stanford Theater. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k4hzWTLvBFI/VMh00gkyS1I/AAAAAAAAHzQ/y2aXOT5w59U/s1600/twoseconds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-k4hzWTLvBFI/VMh00gkyS1I/AAAAAAAAHzQ/y2aXOT5w59U/s1600/twoseconds.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>4.<b><i>Two Seconds</i></b> (Mervyn Le Roy, 1932) Film Noir connoisseur Elliot Lavine gave me an historical beating with this "proto-noir", "pre-code" performance by Edward G. Robinson. Truly left me gasping for air. Screened @ The Roxie Movie Theater part of "I Wake Up Dreaming 2014" series. <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--_brapoD6bk/VMh0faH86fI/AAAAAAAAHyU/t-UMJNrDs9w/s1600/chanismissing.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--_brapoD6bk/VMh0faH86fI/AAAAAAAAHyU/t-UMJNrDs9w/s1600/chanismissing.jpg" height="184" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>3. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Chan Is Missing</i> (Wayne Wang, 1982) As soon as this deeply moving 16mm print ended, I went home and watched it again. Joe and Steve's relationship is truly priceless as are all of the San Francisco insights, which still relate to the city to this day. Screened @ The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts part of Joel Sheperd's "LEST WE FORGET: Remembering Radical San Francisco" film series <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEhTL4YZnnE/VMh1eiHkAVI/AAAAAAAAHzk/bs4lHBqZOwo/s1600/losangelesplaysitself.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-MEhTL4YZnnE/VMh1eiHkAVI/AAAAAAAAHzk/bs4lHBqZOwo/s1600/losangelesplaysitself.jpg" height="133" width="200" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>2.<b><i>Los Angeles Plays Itself</i></b> (Thom Anderson, 2003) Life changing restored documentary. Sent me spiraling into all sorts of films made in Los Angeles from the "L.A. Rebellion movement"<i style="font-weight: bold;"></i> to Gregory Nava's <i style="font-weight: bold;">El Norte</i> (Guatemala/Mexico/US, 1983). Watch at any cost. Screened @ The Castro Movie Theatre<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--VslEho-WW4/VMh0_7fp3RI/AAAAAAAAHzc/BuvrEoghr_w/s1600/samfuller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/--VslEho-WW4/VMh0_7fp3RI/AAAAAAAAHzc/BuvrEoghr_w/s1600/samfuller.jpg" height="640" width="483" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image provided by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table>1. <i style="font-weight: bold;">Park Row</i> (Sam Fuller, 1952), <i><b>A Fuller Life</b>&nbsp;</i>(Samantha Fuller, 2013) and <i><b>Pickup on South Street</b></i> (Sam Fuller, 1953) Planned on only watching the rare 35mm print of <i><b>Park Row</b></i> but ended up staying for the whole mind blowing Triple Bill. Seek out his daughter's documentary. It is beautifully structured by stars reading huge passages from his book. Favorites included Tim Roth, Jennifer Beals, Joe Dante, Bill Duke, James Franco, William Friedkin, Mark Hamill and Buck Henry! While my mother fell in love with Richard Widmark during <i style="font-weight: bold;">Pickup on South Street</i>, I fell just as hard for Thelma Ritter as Moe which truly has to be&nbsp;one of the most amazing characters in film history. Screened&nbsp;@ The Castro Movie Theatre (Note the gust of wind that embraced my mother when taking the photo. We're pretty sure that it was Mr. Widmark himself.)http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/jesse-hawthorne-ficks.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-736427972108910805Tue, 27 Jan 2015 21:57:00 +00002015-01-27T22:24:59.581-08:00IOHTE 2014Noir CityRoxieSFIFFSilent Film FestivalIOHTE: Michael Hawley<i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>Contributor Michael Hawley blogs at his own site <a href="http://film-415.blogspot.com/">film-415</a>.</i><span style="font-family: inherit;"> </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ten Favorite 2014 Bay Area Revival Screenings<o:p></o:p></span><br /><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-frzpmL3P1pk/VMWgUzdQnRI/AAAAAAAAHxQ/bA9dW5IRSPE/s1600/cabinetofdrcaligari.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-frzpmL3P1pk/VMWgUzdQnRI/AAAAAAAAHxQ/bA9dW5IRSPE/s1600/cabinetofdrcaligari.bmp" height="291" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Kino DVD</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari</b> (Germany, 1920, director Robert Wiene), Castro Theatre, San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Silent Autumn, U.S. premiere of a mind-blowing 4K digital restoration)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Noir City <i>oriental-ist</i> triple bill <b>of Singapore</b> (1947, director John Brahm), <b>Macao</b> (1952, director Josef von Sternberg) and <b>The Shanghai Gesture</b> (1941, director Josef von Sternberg), Castro Theatre, Noir City<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Queen Margot: The Director's Cut</b> (France, director Patrice Chéreau), Kabuki Sundance Cinema, San Francisco International Film Festival<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Curt McDowell double bill of <b>Taboo: The Single and the LP</b> (1980) and <b>Sparkle's Tavern</b> (1985), Roxie Theatre, with Melinda McDowell in person)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><b>Son of the Sheik</b> (1926, director George Fitzmaurice), Castro Theatre, San Francisco Silent Film Festival's Silent Autumn, world premiere of new score by The Alloy Orchestra</span></div><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: .25in;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Julien Duvivier double bill of <b>Highway Pickup</b> (France, 1963) and <b>Deadlier Than the Male</b> (France, 1963) at the Roxie Theatre, "The French Had a Name For It" French film noir series&nbsp;</span><o:p></o:p></div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-michael-hawley.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-8621734913682534354Tue, 27 Jan 2015 07:57:00 +00002015-01-27T23:11:55.573-08:00IOHTE 2014PFASilent Film FestivalIOHTE: Lucy Laird<i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>Contributor Lucy Laird is the new Operations Director of the <a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/about/staff">San Francisco Silent Film Festival</a>.</i><br /><i>&nbsp;</i> <br />My two eyes were removed in a painful procedure three years ago, but I'm happy to report that they began regenerating in 2014. My doctors predict a full recovery in 15 years' time—i.e., when my daughter turns 18. So forgive me when I list nearly every repertory screening that I attended this past year. And with that caveat, here they are, in chronological order:<br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q3IGTCC0oQ0/VMApDM04doI/AAAAAAAAHuc/fB1sxa0xGKA/s1600/godzillaonmonsterisland.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q3IGTCC0oQ0/VMApDM04doI/AAAAAAAAHuc/fB1sxa0xGKA/s1600/godzillaonmonsterisland.jpg" height="298" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image supplied by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;">Sunday, July 20, 2014: Lotte Reiniger's&nbsp;<i><b><a href="http://bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN20746" rel="nofollow" style="background: none; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">M<span style="font-family: inherit;">ary's Birthday</span></a></b></i> at the Pacific Film Archive</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Little did I realize that this would be my last chance to savor the curatorial finesse of Steve Seid at the PFA—now retired from his position there, but, I hope, not from film programming—with the "cheat" addition of this Reiniger short within a series devoted to adaptations of children's picture books. Bonus: The whole family could attend! There is nothing more delightful than a theater full of little kids in good moods, exclaiming at the onscreen wonders of their favorite books and artists come to life. (And no, that certain Disney film with two princesses that shall not be named doesn't count!) And even more delightful is a certain two-and-a-half-year-old proclaiming over the following weeks and months: "That movie with the flies is my favorite movie!" You can see why&nbsp;<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGu3gRF-Now" rel="nofollow" style="background: none; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">here</a>.</span><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5pwLKEtknfs/VMBDOLCQaxI/AAAAAAAAHv8/Ebb0Y2-wkWA/s1600/normallove.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5pwLKEtknfs/VMBDOLCQaxI/AAAAAAAAHv8/Ebb0Y2-wkWA/s1600/normallove.jpg" height="230" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image supplied by contributor</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;">Saturday, September 20, 2014: Laurel and Hardy in&nbsp;<i><b><a href="http://www.silentfilm.org/archive/another-fine-mess-silent-laurel-and-hardy-shorts" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421876986958_25709" rel="nofollow" style="background: none; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">T<span style="font-family: inherit;">wo Tars</span></a></b></i> at the Castro Theatre, as part of the Silent Film Festival's Silent Autumn Event</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">Full disclosure: I was working this event and therefore wasn't able to watch the full program of three L&amp;H shorts (the other two were <i><b>S<span style="font-family: inherit;">hould Married Men Go Home</span>?</b></i> and <i><b>B<span style="font-family: inherit;">ig Business</span></b></i>), but I did manage to duck in and enjoy the gumball machine and traffic jam scenes in <i><b>T<span style="font-family: inherit;">wo Tars</span></b></i>. (And yes, this was another screening that a toddler could attend, shushing seniors be darned!) But having grown up watching Stan and Ollie's sound films on television, I couldn't believe that I was finally able to watch them on the big screen. Could the traffic jam scene be the first cinematic treatment of road rage? I don't know, but I am pleased to report that in my daughter's wise judgment, "Mama's work movie" slapsticked its way to the #1 spot on her list, knocking out Reiniger's "fly movie."</span> <table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kWHBTt6k8o4/VMAp5keOGuI/AAAAAAAAHuk/5gjZRIOlYhA/s1600/titicutfollies.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-kWHBTt6k8o4/VMAp5keOGuI/AAAAAAAAHuk/5gjZRIOlYhA/s1600/titicutfollies.png" height="425" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image supplied by contributor -- see below</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: inherit;">Thursday, November 20, 2014: Leo Esakya's&nbsp;<i><b><a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/film/FN20883" id="yui_3_16_0_1_1421876986958_25695" rel="nofollow" style="background: none; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">A<span style="font-family: inherit;">merikan<span style="font-family: inherit;">ka</span></span></a></b></i> at the Pacific Film Archive</span><span style="font-family: inherit;">The&nbsp;<a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/georgian" rel="nofollow" style="background: none; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Georgian cinema series</a>&nbsp;runs for a few more months, through Spring 2015. Go. And be sure to see all the silents you can. The one I've listed here, <b><i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Amerikanka</span></i></b>, is a mesmerizing, rhythmic, tension-filled ode to an underground printing press of the revolutionary period. "Amerikanka" or "American Lady"—as explained by Peter Bagrov of Gosfilmofond, who was there to introduce the screening—probably refers to the make of the printing press itself. And print is what dominates this film, from the montage of satirical personal ads at the start ("Light armour, resistant to any revolver, for sale. Tested...Good-looking count in his 30s wishes to meet a rich lady with a view to marriage.") to the revolutionary pamphlets streaming off the press, to the notes and maps of the soil analyst trying to uncover the rebel print factory, to the letter dictated by an unseen Lenin to the typist's clacking keys. It was exhilarating and exhausting for this American lady, as I read the translation of the fast-paced text and intertitles to the audience over a microphone. One of my friends in attendance likened my performance to that of a bid caller at an auction. Oof! Sorry about that, comrades.&nbsp;</span>(Picture for this blurb:&nbsp;<a href="https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lesnaya+ul.,+55,+Moskva,+Russia,+127055/@55.781628,37.593346,3a,52.5y,324h,90t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sZNiFKRrZY1E8O4T4tWpFxw!2e0!4m2!3m1!1s0x46b54a196b69d98b:0x8dcccae81aa2d668!6m1!1e1" rel="nofollow" style="background-attachment: initial; background-clip: initial; background-color: transparent; background-image: initial; background-origin: initial; background-position: initial; background-repeat: initial; background-size: initial; color: #196ad4; margin: 0px; outline: none; padding: 0px;" target="_blank">Google Street View</a>&nbsp;of the underground printing press—with a fruit wholesaling business as a front—still in existence today as a museum at 55 Lesnaya St, Moscow.) http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-lucy-laird.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-1556055756309689183Tue, 27 Jan 2015 02:35:00 +00002015-01-26T18:35:05.603-08:00IOHTE 2014Silent Film FestivalStanfordIOHTE: Veronika Ferdman<div class="MsoNormal"><i>"IOHTE" stands for "I Only Have Two Eyes"; it's my annual survey of selected San Francisco Bay Area cinephiles' favorite in-the-cinema screenings of classic films and archival oddities from the past year. An index of participants can be found <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2014-edition.html">here</a>.</i><br /><i><br /></i><i>Contributor Veronika Ferdman wrote in 2014 for <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/author/168">Slant Magazine</a>, <a href="http://www.inreviewonline.com/results/r.html?cx=partner-pub-9052826112447826%3Aqrsn0y-pi1r&amp;cof=FORID%3A9&amp;ie=ISO-8859-1&amp;q=veronkia+ferdman&amp;sa=Search">In Review Online</a> and elsewhere.</i><br /><br />That nine of the ten films on this list are ones that were viewed at the Stanford Theatre is a two-fold reflection of the incredible (miraculous) programming that occurs there and the fact that living in the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">South</st1:placename> <st1:placetype w:st="on">Bay</st1:placetype></st1:place>also makes this one of my few "local" rep theatres.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">A strong part of me wants to create an alternate ballot of an imaginary top 10 of the best rep films I <i>would</i>have seen if distances were shorter and I was better at managing time. Surely, many of the Hou Hsiao-hsien and Georgian films played by the PFA would be there, as would the Castro's screening of <i><b>Chelsea Girls</b>, </i>and the William Lustig <i><b>Maniac Cop</b></i> trilogy shown by the YBCA, and, oh, so many others.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HinaQWqdUKo/VMWdF-ay1fI/AAAAAAAAHw0/dsp8M8f_IJ8/s1600/theshoparoundthecorner.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-HinaQWqdUKo/VMWdF-ay1fI/AAAAAAAAHw0/dsp8M8f_IJ8/s1600/theshoparoundthecorner.bmp" height="238" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from The Story of Film DVD, Music Box Films</td></tr></tbody></table>But, to leave the imaginary ideal and get back to the films seen in the physical world..</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">The last rep film I saw in 2014 was Ernst Lubitsch's <i><b>The Shop Around the Corner</b>, </i>which had the simultaneous and divergent effect of making me want to run out of the theater and have ecsatic conversations with people on the street while also pulling me back into the darkness ever-desirous of more images. The best pieces of cinema have that effect - pushing us into the real world with a new way of viewing or approaching it while also joyously propelling us back into the fold of images and sounds.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal">My Top 10:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4TnbwzJHMZI/VMWdaLXijxI/AAAAAAAAHw8/XsinS5Mr98E/s1600/thebachelorandthebobbysoxer.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4TnbwzJHMZI/VMWdaLXijxI/AAAAAAAAHw8/XsinS5Mr98E/s1600/thebachelorandthebobbysoxer.bmp" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">screen capture from Warner DVD</td></tr></tbody></table>1.) <b><i>The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer</i></b> (Stanford Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">2.) <b><i>The Bitter Tea of General Yen</i></b> (Stanford Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">3.) <b><i>Clash by Night&nbsp;</i></b>(Stanford Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">4.) <b><i>Night Nurse</i></b> (Stanford Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">5.) <a href="http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/article/san-francisco-silent-film-festival-2014"><b><i>Underground</i></b></a> (Castro Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">6.) <b><i>Jeopardy</i></b> (Stanford Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">7.) <b><i>There's Always Tomorrow</i></b> (Stanford Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">8.) <b><i>Remember the Night</i></b> (Stanford Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">9.)<b><i> The Reluctant Debutante</i></b> (Stanford Theatre)</div><div class="MsoNormal">10.) <b><i>The Shop Around the Corner</i></b> (Stanford Theatre)</div>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/iohte-veronika-ferdman.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-8974204439576333451Mon, 19 Jan 2015 01:34:00 +00002015-01-18T17:34:12.949-08:00CastroNoir CityShockproof (1949)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--MVULLZ0XGk/VLqc8zdPKsI/AAAAAAAAHtQ/yU9WobRkjeo/s1600/shockproof.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/--MVULLZ0XGk/VLqc8zdPKsI/AAAAAAAAHtQ/yU9WobRkjeo/s1600/shockproof.bmp" height="295" width="400" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen capture from Cinema Guild DVD release of Los Angeles Plays Itself.</td></tr></tbody></table>WHO: Douglas Sirk directed this, from a screenplay written by Sam Fuller.<br /><br />WHAT: I've never seen this film before, so let me pull a few sentences of synopsis from the collector-worthy glossy program booklet given to every attendee of the Noir City festival this week:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Jenny Marsh is freed from prison after serving five years for the "self-defense" killing of a man who tried to murder her larcenous lover. Her parole officer, Griff Marat, takes pity and helps her arrange a new life on the straight-and-narrow. But Jenny proves too desirable for Griff's own good, and he impulsively marries the ex-con--a parole violation that makes them fugitives! More bad news--Jenny's shifty boyfriend is still in the picture.</blockquote>WHERE/WHEN: Today only at 2:00 and 7:30 at the Castro, presented as part of&nbsp;<a href="http://www.noircity.com/nc13p1.html#jan18">Noir City 13</a>.<br /><br />WHY: Friday night's presentation of a six-minute video showcasing then-and-now comparisons of exterior location shots from <i style="font-weight: bold;"><a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/woman-on-run-1950.html">Woman on the Run</a></i>&nbsp;with their modern-day counterparts. Some places like the army/navy surplus stores on the Embarcadero, had disappeared entirely and were even hissed by some audience members. Others, like Fisherman's Wharf, had changed only superficially since 1950. But the audience reaction was most vociferous for the shots that in fact had been taken not in San Francisco at all, but in Southern California; namely, the final rollercoaster and midway section shot, not in Playland at the Beach as is often assumed, but <a href="http://reelsf.com/woman-on-the-run-amusement-park">Ocean Park Pier</a> off Santa Monica, and the opening hillside murder location, which was actually filmed in the&nbsp;<a href="http://reelsf.com/reelsf/woman-on-the-run-witness-to-a-murder">bunker hill</a>&nbsp;area of Los Angeles. I highly recommend watching Thom Anderson's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Los Angeles Plays Itself</i>&nbsp;for more context on this fascinatingly frequent film noir location. It's also where the above shot from <i style="font-weight: bold;">Shockproof</i>&nbsp;was filmed, and I'm excited to see it pop up again in the festival. Wonder how many more times it will this week...<br /><br />HOW: 35mm, on a double-bill with Sirk's 1948 film <i style="font-weight: bold;">Sleep My Love</i>, produced by Mark Pickford(!)http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/shockproof-1949.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-557533272461278554Sat, 17 Jan 2015 08:30:00 +00002015-01-17T00:30:01.470-08:00Alfred HitchcockCastroFandorNoir CityPFAStanfordSuspicion (1941)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v0WF1qmhYNg/VLmMLsnXNjI/AAAAAAAAHss/LKII6n4mvGY/s1600/suspicion.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-v0WF1qmhYNg/VLmMLsnXNjI/AAAAAAAAHss/LKII6n4mvGY/s1600/suspicion.bmp" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>WHO: Joan Fontaine is the only person ever to have won an Academy Award for performing in a picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She won the Best Actress award over Barbara Stanwyck, Bette Davis, Greer Garson and, most famously, her sister Olivia de Havilland.<br /><br />WHAT: Hitchcock's third film made after moving to California from England was set entirely in England but used some shots of Northern California in its construction, although I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the actors never had to leave the studio, as every shot looks like it could have been completed using stand-ins, rear-projections and/or backdrops. I wrote a bit about the key scene in my Keyframe Daily write-up focusing on Noir City selections involving San Francisco and Monterey County settings:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">In <i><b>Suspicion</b></i>, another Noir City 13 pick featuring Joan Fontaine, perilous Big Sur cliffs stood in for coastal England in the scene where Fontaine investigates a site where her deceitful husband (Cary Grant) has taken cheerful investor in a potential real-estate venture to inspect—or is it to be murdered?&nbsp; No series of marriage-themed films could be complete without an example of Hitchcock, who returned to the subject repeatedly throughout his career</blockquote>WHERE/WHEN: Screens 1:30 today only at the Castro Theatre, courtesy of the <a href="http://www.noircity.com/nc13p1.html#jan17matinee">Noir City</a> festival.<br /><br />WHY: While all but three of the Noir City 13 selections (last night's <i><b>Woman on the Run</b></i>, tonight's <i><b>The Suspect</b></i>, and Wednesday's <i><b>Crime of Passion</b></i>) have never been screened before at the festival's San Francisco iterations, I believe that <i><b>Suspicion </b></i>is one of ten titles in the festival that go one further: they've never shown at Noir City events hosted in <i>any</i> city. I have a feeling that impresario Eddie Muller is just a hair more curious to see how <i><b>Suspicion</b></i> and the other nine films will play in front of an audience he's assembled than he is about some of the others which have screened at his events in Hollywood or elsewhere before. Those nine according to my (unverified) records: <i><b>The Thin Man</b></i>, <i><b>After the Thin Man</b></i>, <i><b>The Set-Up</b></i>, <i><b>Clash By Night</b></i>, <i><b>The Sleeping Tiger</b></i>, <i><b>The Guilty</b></i>, <i><b>Les Diaboliques</b></i>, <i><b>Seconds </b></i>and <i><b>the Honeymoon Killers</b></i>.<br /><br />Today actually offers some tough choices for noir lovers, as there are no less than four films screening at the Castro, but also a 35mm print of <i><b>Double Indemnity </b></i>at Berkeley's Pacific Film Archive as part of its half-film, half-digital <a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/billwilder">Billy Wilder</a> series. (The next 35mm print in that series is <i><b>The Lost Weekend</b></i> January 30). And the Alfred Hitchcock series at the <a href="http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Hitch%202015.html">Stanford Theatre</a> in Palo Alto is showing one of his most noir-ish of films (perhaps even moreso than <i><b>Suspicion</b></i>), <i><b>Notorious</b></i>. At least that one repeats tomorrow, so a true obsessive could theoretically attend the Sunday matinees of Douglas Sirk's <i><b>Shockproof </b></i>and <i><b>Sleep, My Love</b></i> and then head down the peninsula in time to see the 9:35 showing of <i><b>Notorious</b></i> (you might even be able to make it to <i><b>To Catch a Thief </b></i>at 7:30). Being carless, I'm not going to do that myself, but I am trying to figure out how to squeeze a viewing of one of the last few Hitchcock films I've never seen before, <i><b>Young and Innocent</b></i>, into <i>next</i> weekend without missing too many of the Noir City festivities. Public transportation schedules won't allow me to see that reputedly wonderful Hitchcock film without missing out on either Edward Dmytryk's <i><b>The Hidden Room</b></i> on Thursday, the new Film Noir Foundation restoration of <i><b>The Guilty</b></i> on Friday, Luchino Visconti's <i><b>Ossessione </b></i>AND either <i><b>Cry Terror! </b></i>or <i><b>Les Diaboliques</b></i> next Saturday, or else <i><b>The Honeymoon Killers </b></i>next Sunday. Of these, I've only seen <i><b>Ossessione </b></i>before. Right now I'm leaning towards skipping <i><b>The Hidden Room</b></i> but if anyone wants to speak up for it I'm all ears. Noting that there's at least one strongly marital-themed Hitchcock film playing at the Stanford almost every weekend of its eight-week series makes me wish the latter venue had waited just a couple weeks to start their series out of conflict with Noir City: 'Til Death Do Us Part.<br /><br />HOW: According to the <a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/?days=10&amp;month=January&amp;day=16&amp;year=2015">Film On Film Foundation</a> website, every Noir City selection this year will be screened on 35mm prints except for Friday night's <i><b>No Man Of Her Own</b></i>. <i><b>Suspicion</b></i> screens on a double-bill with Ida Lupino's <i><b>The Bigamist</b></i>.http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/suspicion-1941.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-7827564705608495708Fri, 16 Jan 2015 19:46:00 +00002015-01-16T11:46:01.164-08:00CastroFandorFrisco filmmakerLinksNoir CityWoman on the Run (1950)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bnXRnZV4wqA/VLlasSx9dRI/AAAAAAAAHsc/mmdZZA0qRQw/s1600/woman%2Bon%2Bthe%2BRun.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-bnXRnZV4wqA/VLlasSx9dRI/AAAAAAAAHsc/mmdZZA0qRQw/s1600/woman%2Bon%2Bthe%2BRun.PNG" height="467" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">image supplied by Film Noir Foundation</td></tr></tbody></table>WHO: Ann Sheridan (who was born 100 years ago this February 21st) stars in this, and was also an uncredited co-producer.<br /><br />WHAT: As I wrote in a <a href="https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/on-location-with-noir-city-13s-til-death-do-us-part?utm_source=twitter&amp;utm_medium=social">Keyframe Daily</a> article previewing the <a href="http://www.noircity.com/">Noir City</a> film festival, published yesterday:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Ann Sheridan plays the hard-boiled spouse of a failed artist who has gone into hiding after witnessing a murder. She attempts to track him down using old sketchbooks of neighborhood inhabitants as clues to his whereabouts, while trying to evade detectives and newspapermen trying to get to him first. If her wanderings across city hills into various dives feel particularly authentic to San Francisco’s character, perhaps it’s because the cinematographer was a native son, Hal Mohr, who’d filmed extensively here. (His credits include the notorious <b><i>The Last Night of the Barbary Coast</i></b> for Sol Lesser in 1913.) Director Norman Foster, best known for his collaborations with Orson Welles, had also made his transition from actor to director in a 1936 San Francisco film called <b><i>I Cover Chinatown</i></b>. <i><b>Woman on the Run</b></i> is a completely unpretentious, excellent thriller and a genuine Noir City discovery making its long-awaited reappearance at the festival after the last copy was thought destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire.</blockquote>Here's a link to my <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2008/06/universal-fire.html">piece</a> on the Universal fire at the time it happened, and more importantly, a candid 2010 interview with <a href="http://thesunbreak.com/2010/03/05/noir-city-man-eddie-muller-speaks-part-2/">Eddie Muller</a> about his exchanges with the studio after that event. I also must link to Brian Hollins's terrific <a href="http://reelsf.com/woman-on-the-run-1950/">Reel SF</a> page for this film, which guides us through the specific SaCastron Francisco (and Southern California) locations where it was filmed. <br /><br />WHERE/WHEN: Screens 7:30 tonight only at the Castro Theatre as part of <a href="http://www.noircity.com/nc13p1.html#jan16">Noir City</a>.<br /><br />WHY: With yesterday's re-opening of the <a href="http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/filmseries/">Pacific Film Archive</a> for the Spring semester coinciding with a new <a href="http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Hitch%202015.html">Stanford Theatre</a> Alfred Hitchcock retrospective, the new Frisco Bay repertory film year is now officially underway (although I've already seen some fine revival programs at the <a href="http://www.exploratorium.edu/visit/calendar/after-dark/january-2015">Exploratorium</a>, the <a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/553794323574431744">Castro</a>, and <a href="http://oddballfilms.blogspot.com/2015/01/broad-strokes-pioneering-women-in.html">Oddball Films</a>, and regretfully missed some at the <a href="http://www.nilesfilmmuseum.org/january-2015.htm">Niles Essanay Silent Film Museum</a>)&nbsp; I usually like to at least start my annual <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/01/i-only-have-two-eyes-2013.html">I Only Have Two Eyes</a> survey of the prior year's repertory scene before the start of Noir City, but a combination of that festival starting early and my soliciting entries later than I'd hoped means that's not happening this year. But I'm hard at work compiling and you'll soon start seeing the results posted here. Just not before tonight's thrilling kick-off to ten days of 35mm noir heaven at the Castro.<br /><br />As Noir City honcho Eddie Muller told <a href="http://www.sfgate.com/movies/article/Restoration-of-Woman-on-the-Run-highlights-6015710.php">G. Allen Johnson</a> recently, tonight's festival opener <i><b>Woman on the Run </b></i>was the genesis of this year's "Unholy Matrimony" theme. I tried to avoid hinting at spoilers in my Keyframe article on the festival, so I didn't talk much about the marriage angle of the film in the above-quoted paragraph, but suffice to say (still eschewing revealing anything specific to those who might not have seen the film) <i><b>Woman on the Run</b></i> presents a <i>really</i> interesting portrayal of wedlock circa 1950. It's an ideal opener for so many reasons, and of the films in the festival I've seen before, it's the one I'm most excited to see again (followed closely by the Tuesday night Robert Ryan double bill and the Wednesday night Barbara Stanwyck bill, which is an exact duplicate of one I saw at the Stanford last April). Partly I'm so excited to see <i><b>Woman on the Run</b></i> on the big screen because in 2014 I moved into an apartment overlooking one of the locations where it was shot. To think Ann Sheridan was captured on film walking below my kitchen window sixty-five years ago! I can't wait to see that particular scene, and in fact the whole film again in what I expect will be a gorgeous 35mm print a zillion times more clear than the available DVD and youtube versions.<br /><br />HOW: <i><b>Woman on the Run</b></i> screens from a newly-struck, never publicly projected, 35mm print on a double-bill with an archival 35mm print of what I'm pretty certain was Nicholas Ray's only film set in San Francisco: <i><b>Born to be Bad</b></i>.http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2015/01/woman-on-run-1950.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-3422442545748033227Tue, 30 Dec 2014 21:03:00 +00002015-01-01T15:44:56.847-08:00CastroFrisco filmmakerNoir CityThe Thin Man (1934)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jIepIKTO6H4/VKG0jLrMcaI/AAAAAAAAHsM/mBC2YvulJQ4/s1600/thethinman.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jIepIKTO6H4/VKG0jLrMcaI/AAAAAAAAHsM/mBC2YvulJQ4/s1600/thethinman.bmp" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>WHO: Dashiell Hammett wrote the novel this was based upon, first published in six consecutive issues of Redbook magazine in 1933 and early 1934.<br /><br />WHAT: <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Thin Man</i>&nbsp;is one of those classic Hollywood movies that has little to no formal notability, but that stands out from the sea of studio-system potboilers by dint of character and tone. Its central characters are a married couple: a retired detective (William Powell) and his equally sleuth-like wife (Myrna Loy). Their marriage is one of the screen's most unique and beloved, for reasons that <a href="http://www.deepfocusreview.com/reviews/thinman.asp">Brian Eggert</a> gets into very well:<br /><blockquote class="tr_bq">Nick and Nora’s blissful union is a rarity for onscreen marriages, even more so upon the film’s release in 1934, just two years after the end of Prohibition. Cinemas were filled with morality tales, further restricted by the recently established Production Code. But Nick and Nora’s penchant for drink isn’t represented as a kink in their marriage or a grand social problem; rather, it’s a social lubricant that greases the film’s funniest lines. A reporter asks Nick about the murder mystery: "Can't you tell us anything about the case?" and Nick replies, "Yes, it's putting me way behind in my drinking." Alcohol fuels their carefree party lifestyle, sustained by Nora’s moneyed background and Nick’s plan to live happily off his wife’s bank account. None of the usual insecurities apply—he’s comfortable with the fact that his wife’s the breadwinner, and her only complaint might be that her husband is less exciting when he’s not serving as a private detective.</blockquote>WHERE/WHEN: Screens at the <a href="http://castrotheatre.com/p-list.html#dec30">Castro Theatre</a> today at 3:00 and 7:00, and, presented as part of the thirteenth annual <a href="http://www.noircity.com/nc13p2.html">Noir City</a>&nbsp;festival on January 19th at 2:00 and 7:00. Also at the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cinemasf.com/balboa/#classics">Balboa Theatre</a>&nbsp;January 22nd at 7:30 PM.<br /><br />WHY: It's been almost two weeks since the <a href="http://www.noircity.com/nc13p1.html">Noir City XIII program</a> was announced at an annual Christmas-themed screening at the Castro. With ten different holiday-connected mid-twentieth-century films screened in five Decembers, one might wonder if Noir City impresario Eddie Muller and his curatorial companion Anita Monga are running out of "noir" films appropriate to the occasion. And indeed, the "noir" elements to this year's pairing of <b><i><a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/12/o-henrys-full-house-1952.html">O. Henry's Full House</a></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">&nbsp;and </span><i><a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-curse-of-cat-people-1944.html">The Curse of the Cat People</a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">&nbsp;<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">were clearly outweighed by their seasonal elements. Three out of five of the O. Henry adaptations are winter-set, and one explicitly about Christmas, while only one contains a character we might expect to see in a "straight" noir- Richard Widmark's safecracker in "The Clarion Call", often cited as a reprise of his career-launching Tommy Udo character from </span><b>Kiss of Death</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">. Meanwhile </span><b>The Curse of the Cat People</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, while a beautiful depiction of a family experiencing shifting seasons in New England, resists all classification usually attempted on it, whether as a horror picture, a sequel, or as Muller noted from the stage in his introduction, a B-movie; it wears the "noir" label no more comfortably.</span></span></i></b><br /><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></i></b><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">So it's a bit of a surprise to see a Yuletime-set detective film like </span><b>The Thin Man</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">&nbsp;programmed as part of Noir City's main event in January, knowing it could've been "saved up" for a future December showing. I'm guessing it's also unprecedented for a Noir City selection to be shown so shortly after a Castro booking arranged by the "regular" venue programming team headed up by Keith Arnold. But there's surely a reason or two why </span><b>The Thin Man</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">&nbsp;simply had to be screened at this year's edition of Noir City and I'm here to tease out some possible culprits.&nbsp;</span></span></i></b><br /><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></i></b><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">First, </span><b>The Thin Man</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">&nbsp;has never screened at a Noir City festival before, not even at the daylong <a href="http://blog.sfgate.com/tgladysz/2012/01/26/dashiell-hammetts-san-francisco-san-franciscos-dashiell-hammett/">Dashiell Hammett tribute</a> in 2012. What better year for it to make its debut than a year in which the festival theme is "'Til Death Do Us Part"? In the midst of a week and a half of nearly two dozen films celebrating some of the worst marriages in cinema history, it may be necessary to have a day set aside for perhaps the most memorably positive matrimonial depiction dreamed up by Hollywood. Contra the information in the first sentence of the last paragraph of <a href="http://sfarts.org/feature.cfm?title=marriage-noir-style&amp;featureID=377">this</a> preview article, Muller and Monga have placed </span><b>The Thin Man</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">&nbsp;a third of the way into the festival, timed perfectly as a breather after a weekend of infidelities, murders, and other impediments to wedded bliss.&nbsp;</span></span></i></b><br /><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></i></b><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Second, </span><b>The Thin Man</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">&nbsp;and especially its double-bill-mate sequel&nbsp;</span><b>After the Thin Man</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">&nbsp;fit snugly into a sub-theme running through much of this year's festival: San Francisco. After last year's <a href="https://www.fandor.com/keyframe/noir-city-12-here-and-there">international noir celebration</a> in which almost all of the 27 films shown were set (and often shot) abroad, it was a natural to make Noir City XIII a real homecoming, with more films made in or about Northern California than any festival since 2003's inaugural edition. The festival kicks January 16th off with the big discovery from that festival, </span><b><a href="http://reelsf.com/woman-on-the-run-1950/">Woman on the Run</a></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, which I expect will permanently solidify its place in the canon of San Francisco noirs with this newly-premiering restoration funded by the Film Noir Foundation (and Noir City ticket sales). Also on that bill is the 1950 Nick Ray film </span><b>Born To Be Bad</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, which is set in San Francisco but, unlike </span><b>Woman on the Run</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, was not filmed here.<b>&nbsp;</b>Other films that either a) were set partially in San Francisco, Monterey, or otherwise north of the San Luis Obispo county line, b) were at least in part filmed in this region, or c) both, include both halves of the January 17 Joan Fontaine matinee of Alfred Hitchcock's&nbsp;</span><b>Suspicion </b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">and Ida Lupino's </span><b><a href="https://twitter.com/HellOnFriscoBay/status/412385424347123712">The Bigamist</a></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, of the can't-miss January 21 Barbara Stanwyck pairing of </span><b>Clash By Night</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">&nbsp;and </span><b>Crime of Passion</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">, and, I'm told, the January 24th Doris Day noir </span><b>Julie</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">. There may be other San Francisco connections throughout the festival (I've been clued in that my hometown somehow figures into another Stanwyck selection I've yet to see for myself called </span><b>No Man of Her Own</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">).&nbsp;</span><b>The Thin Man</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">'s protagonists are, like Hammett himself, San Francisco residents, but in the original film the action is all in New York City, where they are vacationing. It's not until </span><b>After the Thin Man</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">&nbsp;that they return home and we get to see unprocessed shots of William Powell and Myrna Loy walking up Telegraph Hill and driving down Market Street.</span></span></i></b><br /><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></i></b><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">Finallly, for the f</span></span></i></b><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">irst time since 2006 the Noir City festival will be held during the week of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, meaning that unlike in recent years in which Monday night selections were often obscurities aimed at hardcore noir-heads, it makes sense to program a famous, crowd-pleasing title on a day which many potential attendees will be able to attend as a weekday matinee if they prefer that to evening showings. And those who might wish the Castro was screening films that wrangle with issues of civil rights and the ideals of Dr. King on his honorary day may at least approve that </span><b>The Thin Man </b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">was shot by pioneering Asian-American cinematographer James Wong Howe, and that some of its key creators like&nbsp;Hammett and Loy were involved as white allies in civil rights struggles. But though Noir City has in the past hosted an "African-American noir" night, and even once planned to bring Harry Belafonte to town for screenings of </span><b>Odds Against Tomorrow </b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">and </span><b>Kansas City </b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;">(he sent his regrets over <a href="http://vimeo.com/9421533">video</a> instead), the first few early years of the festival never involved thematic programs on the MLK holiday itself, and this year's programming above all continues that pattern.</span></span></i></b><br /><b><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal;"><br /></span></span></i></b>HOW: Todays screening of <b><i>The Thin Man</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">&nbsp;is on a double-bill with a Marx Brothers comedy that I probably <i>wouldn't </i>want to see on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, </span><i>A Day at the Races</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">. Both films screen in 35mm.</span></b><br /><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">The format for next month's Noir City screening of </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Thin Man</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">&nbsp;has not yet been revealed on the program website, nor via the reliable&nbsp;<a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/">Bay Area Film Calendar</a>. Curiously, only six of the twenty-five Noir City XIII film titles are listed on the Film Noir Foundation website as involving 35mm film: </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Woman on the Run</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">&nbsp;and its fellow FNF restoration </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Guilty</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, an archival print of&nbsp;</span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Born to Be Bad</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, and restorations of </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Bigamist</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">, Douglas Sirk's </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Sleep, My Love</i><span class="Apple-style-span">, and the Max Ophüls masterpiece </span><i style="font-weight: bold;">Caught</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">. It's too early to read too much into this, as there are plenty of reasons why it might be so (including an uncharacteristic sloppiness on the part of designers).&nbsp;</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;">Perhaps these six prints are merely the ones with the most interesting pedigrees; other films in the program might be 35mm but simple release prints and not archival or restorations. It's also possible that these six are the only ones confirmed as 35mm, and that other formats are up in the air at this time, although it would surprise me to find out that rarities like, say, Joseph Losey's </span><span class="Apple-style-span"><i style="font-weight: bold;">The Sleeping Tiger</i>&nbsp;(part of an "American expatriate directors in Britain" night Jan. 22) or Luchino Visconti's career-launching James M. Cain adaptation <i style="font-weight: bold;">Ossessione</i>&nbsp;(screening with <i style="font-weight: bold;">Les Diabolique</i>&nbsp;Jan. 24 as an extension of last year's international noir foray) might be available in both high-quality 35mm and digital versions. But it's perhaps preferable to leave a format unannounced than to announce a 35mm print that might turn out not to appear (like the Castro did when listing this Sunday's <i style="font-weight: bold;">Age of Innocence</i>&nbsp;screening as 35mm on its "coming soon" page, only for it to become DCP when the actual&nbsp;<a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/coming-soon.html">January calendar</a>&nbsp;was published). The possibility that the six mentioned titles will be the only ones screened on 35mm in the whole festival would be a rude shock for the many celluloid-loyal dwellers of Noir City's alleyways, but seems highly doubtful if only for the fact that a 35mm print of one of the other nineteen films on the program, <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Thin Man</i>, is screening today at the very same venue, if under a different aegis.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span">I believe the Balboa Theatre screening of <i style="font-weight: bold;">The Thin Man</i>&nbsp;will be digital, as the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cinemasf.com/balboa/#classics">series</a>&nbsp;of classics the venue is presenting is made up entirely of movies available via DCP. But the Balboa does retain 35mm capability and occasionally utilizes it, so it would be best to double-check the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/?days=7&amp;month=January&amp;day=22&amp;year=2015">Bay Area Film Calendar</a>&nbsp;shortly before the show date to see if it appears on it. If it does, expect a print after all.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><b>UPDATE January 1, 2015: According to the&nbsp;<a href="http://www.filmonfilm.org/filmcalendar/?days=10&amp;month=January&amp;day=16&amp;year=2015">Film On Film Foundation</a>&nbsp;all Noir City screenings but one (<i>No Man of Her Own</i>&nbsp;on Friday, January 23) are expected to screen in 35mm, including <i>The Thin Man</i>!</b></span>http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/12/the-thin-man-1934.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2531345904528580427.post-3169869260288101202Thu, 18 Dec 2014 01:38:00 +00002014-12-17T17:38:32.802-08:00CastroHoward HawksNoir CityRoxieseasonal moviegoingO. Henry's Full House (1952)<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8a1zIROhneY/VJGxtfwWXNI/AAAAAAAAHr8/RFwx4qh0zb8/s1600/ohenrysfullhouse.bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8a1zIROhneY/VJGxtfwWXNI/AAAAAAAAHr8/RFwx4qh0zb8/s1600/ohenrysfullhouse.bmp" height="240" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Screen shot from 20th Century Fox DVD.</td></tr></tbody></table>WHO: Five different directors, three named Henry (King, Koster and Hathaway) and two others (Howard Hawks &amp; Jean Negulesco) each directed a different short story by O. Henry.<br /><br />WHAT: I haven't seen this film yet; I somehow missed it the last time it screened locally, at the <a href="http://www.stanfordtheatre.org/calendars/Howard%20Hawks.html">Stanford Theatre</a>'s 2012 Howard Hawks festival. I love the idea of Hawks adapting "The Ransom of Red Chief"- putting him in the excellent company of <a href="http://www.a2pcinema.com/ozu-san/films/astraightforwardboy.htm">Yasujiro Ozu</a>. I also am tickled picturing Henry Koster directing Marilyn Monroe and his <i><b><a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/09/it-started-with-eve-1941.html">It Started With Eve</a> </b></i>star Charles Laughton in "The Cop and the Anthem". I don't remember O. Henry's stories "The Clarion Call" or "The Last Leaf" well enough to imagine Henry Hathaway directing Richard Widmark, or Jean Negulesco directing Anne Baxter, as they did here.<br /><br />But the O. Henry story that's been most deeply-ingrained in me is of course the heartbreakingly ironic Yuletide tale "The Gift of the Magi", which in this film was helmed by Henry King and featured Farley Granger and Jeanne Crain (pictured above). Like "The Clarion Call" and "The Cop and the Anthem" it had been filmed previously in 1909 by D.W. Griffith (I have not seen these versions either). Unlike those, it had also been planned to be made into a Technicolor musical by Otto Preminger in 1945. That film was shelved however, making King's version the best-known made in Hollywood.<br /><br />WHERE/WHEN: Screens 7PM tonight only at the Castro Theatre, as part of the annual <a href="http://www.noircity.com/">Noir City</a> Xmas double-bill.<br /><br />WHY: When Eddie Muller decided to use the announcement of the 2011 Noir City Film Festival as a fancy excuse to screen <i><b>Remember The Night</b></i> and <i><b>Mr. Soft Touch</b></i> in December 2010, I wonder if he realized he'd be creating a tradition that would stretch out for five Christmas seasons, providing excuses to show 35mm prints of ten holiday-related feature films to eager Castro audiences. Some of the selections have been more Xmassy (<i><b>Remember the Night</b></i>, last year's <i><b>Christmas Eve</b></i>) than noir, and others have been vice versa (<i><b>Christmas Holiday</b></i> in 2011 and <i><b>Blast of Silence</b></i> in 2013) but they've all been occasions to see mid-century motion pictures in a movie palace, and that's really all that matters. Tonight's screening pairs the O. Henry anthology with the wintry <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/08/the-curse-of-cat-people-1944.html"><i><b>Curse of the Cat People</b></i></a>, which I saw in a beautiful 35mm print at the Stanford last year. Between the two films there are seven different Hollywood directors, as <i><b>Curse...</b></i> was started by Gunther Von Fritsch in the director's chair, but finished by Robert Wise (his career-making promotion from the editor's booth) midway through production.<br /><br />Even if you're not as excited as I am to see this double-bill, you may want to attend just to see a short documentary on the Noir City festival promised as part of the program, and to get the first eyeful of the full 2015 line-up. We already <a href="http://www.filmnoirfoundation.org/news.html">know</a> that next year's festival is a week earlier than usual in recent years, running from January 16 to 25th, and that it will show the Film Noir Foundation's latest 35mm restorations, <i><b>The Guilty</b></i> and <i><b>Woman on the Run</b></i> (the latter a San Francisco-set Noir City rediscovery) at some point during the week and a half.&nbsp; I'm dying to know if last year's "international" edition (which brought me to the Castro for every single film screened, for the first time in festival history) will have some world-class ripples into this year's program, and to find out if "Czar of Noir" Eddie Muller is planning anything special for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, which has for the past couple years been an occasion for a Castro screening of <a href="http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2013/01/wattstax-1973.html"><i><b>Wattstax</b></i></a>, which seems likely to be a tradition no more with Noir City back in that weekend slot (as it had been when it was founded).<br /><br />The Castro does have all its remaining <a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/calendar.htm">December</a> screenings planned out (including some more Christmas-themed programs: <i><b>Muppet Christmas Carol</b></i>, <i><b>Die Hard</b></i> and <i><b>Scrooged</b></i> this Sunday and <i><b>It's A Wonderful Life</b></i> Monday), as well as a number of its <a href="http://www.castrotheatre.com/coming-soon.html">January</a> ones as well. Those who love SF <a href="http://sfsketchfest2015.sched.org/venue/Castro%20Theatre/429+Castro+St.%2C+San+Francisco%2C+CA+94114#.VJIsmUovpGY">Sketchfest</a> and Noir City equally will be glad to see that they overlap much less than in previous years, and that it's easy to <a href="http://sfsketchfest2015.sched.org/type/film#.VJIrvkovpGY">filter</a> all film events on the comedy festival's redesigned website.<br /><br />Meanwhile, the Roxie, in addition to being a <a href="http://sfsketchfest2015.sched.org/venue/Roxie%20Theatre/3117+16th+Street%2C+San+Francisco%2C+CA+94103#.VJIspEovpGY">Sketchfest</a> venue (screening a <a href="http://sfsketchfest2015.sched.org/event/96f6bf1d6da0f941943f31e7637d9585#.VJIs2EovpGY">Preston Sturges film</a> for, I think, the first time ever!) along with the Castro, is currently winding down the third iteration of its own international (specifically French) film noir <a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/creme-de-la-creme/">series</a>. I attended last night's screening of <i><b>Witness In The City</b></i>, an impressively atmospheric thriller based on a story written by the duo from where the ideas for <i><b>Diabolique </b></i>and <i><b>Vertigo</b></i> originally sprang (it repeats tonight) and <i><b>I'll Spit On Your Graves</b></i>, an imagining of American racial dynamics in the late 1950s that seems positively inept (unless I have a far worse understanding of history than I think I do) and that while watching made me feel far more forgiving of Hollywood attempts to depict foreign countries than usual. Maybe the hackers that have just <a href="http://www.sfchronicle.com/movies/article/The-Interview-pulled-from-theaters-in-wake-of-5964190.php#/0">encouraged</a> James Franco to cancel his participation in this weekend's all-Coppola <a href="http://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/coppola-family-affair/?instance_id=5932">celebration</a>, and made last month's Castro screening of <i><b>The Interview</b></i> seem a like an absolute must-see in hindsight should take a look at this one too. (It repeats at the Roxie tomorrow.)<br /><br />HOW: <i><b>O. Henry's Full House</b></i> and <i><b>The Curse of the Cat People</b></i> both screen in 35mm prints.http://hellonfriscobay.blogspot.com/2014/12/o-henrys-full-house-1952.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Brian Darr)0